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I downloaded Emacs 23 and unzipped it into C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU\emacs-23.3, and I ran the addpm program to install it. This put it into the Start menu, but when I try to run Emacs, I get two pop-up issues from Windows. First, it asks whether I should trust this downloaded program. I check "don't ask again" and approve. Then I get the UAC asking for admin privileges. When I approve, Emacs comes up and seems to run normally.

I've tried installing it as a regular user and as an admin user. No matter what I do, it always asks those two questions every time I run it.

Clearly I have done something wrong in the installation, but I wonder what?

5 Answers 5

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Often windows requests admin rights to write to files within system directories. Program Files counts as a directory that needs admin rights to write to. I imagine Emacs writes to some file when running located within that directory and therefore asks for the admin rights to do so.

Try installing emacs into your documents or a subfolder therein.

**If this fixes the issue the problem is with the emacs install. If there's a config/data file it needs to write to regularily it should have placed the file in a public/unsecured directory.

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Emacs almost certainly wants to write files in its installation directory which you have located in a directory which is read-only, even for admins, with UAC.

I always install emacs somewhere outside the program files folder.

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You can fix this without having to move emacs though. Just use process explorer to look at what files it is opening and closing. Or perhaps which folders. Then move them to your User folder. Create hardlinks to the folders/files you moved with mklink. No more UAC.

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Emacs doesn't write any files to its installation directory unless you tell it to by setting HOME to point there. Have you done that? Another possibility is that you have a .emacs file in C:\ (the old default HOME location from Emacs 21 and earlier), so Emacs is using C:\ as HOME rather than the new default of your user directory.

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This is mostly answered.

Regarding your first two issues... they're also "normal" in this day an age of "security via inconvenience" to us users. They are that anything you download from Internet Explorer is tagged so that when you (or some surreptitious virus pretending to be "you") try to let it loose, the system warns you that the internet is untrusted. You can probably get around it by downloading programs with Firefox, Safari or something else next time, but they all still give you a milder popup before letting you run exe and msi programs... just less clicking IIRC.

When you pass that warning, there's the other box called User Account control, which cannot be avoided. Well, that's a half-truth

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  • The latest versions of both Safari and Firefox also tag the file just like IE does. Firefox actually has its own exe popup, followed by Windows' popup.
    – user34993
    Jul 11, 2011 at 4:14
  • You are right. I have even seen both tag them on Macs this past week,
    – Vlueboy
    Jul 12, 2011 at 3:09

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