So my understanding of the whole philosophy of PortableApps was to have software that would normally require Admin rights to the computer installed in such a way as to not require that. "Set your PC free" and all that.
So why is it that attempting to run VeraCrypt is hitting me with a prompt to enter admin credentials? If I had admin credentials, I wouldn't need the portable version of the app.
Am I just doing something wrong?
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
As stated on the page: "VeraCrypt requires admin rights to operate." If you want to map a virtual disk to a drive letter in Windows, you need admin rights. If you don't have admin rights, you can't use any utility to mount and map a drive letter. The choice is we make it available so folks with admin rights can use it or we don't make it available at all.
If you'd like to encrypt your stuff and mount it as a drive letter on a machine you don't have admin rights on, you can use a hardware encrypted flash drive like the PortableApps.com Carbide. The encryption is handled in software and Windows just sees it as a drive, so it comes up as a drive letter you can run apps from.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
You're right that it's ideal if a portable program doesn't require admin rights, but having a separate volume that doesn't ever get decrypted is ideal, and to do that in Windows you need a virtual drive. That unfortunately requires admin.
There's also an encryption program called FreeOTFE that has a component not requiring admin rights. It's not recommended for good security (for several reasons) but might be better than nothing.
Many of the issues surrounding all this have been discussed before at some length. One of the more thorough breakdowns is here: https://portableapps.com/node/24148
Moderator at portablefreeware.com