Software Orbiter only runs under Admin perms?

[tocorbnewb]

Good morning!

I have a laptop installed with Orbiter build September 29 2006. We plan to use this for a Space Camp for kids, so naturally I have an administrator login, and a user login.

Under the admin login, the program opens fine. However when I try to open the program under the user login, the window opens up for just a flash and then disappears. The Orbiter folder is under the Program Files directory, and all permissions seem to be accurate.

Does anybody know of any DLL's or any file of that nature that may cause Orbiter to just crash out under a non-admin login with no error message or anything?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.



Laptop is a HP6730b, brand new, no other issues whatsoever with any other installed software. Just Orbiter giving me a headache

 

[SiberianTiger]

Good morning!

I have a laptop installed with Orbiter build September 29 2006. We plan to use this for a Space Camp for kids, so naturally I have an administrator login, and a user login.

Under the admin login, the program opens fine. However when I try to open the program under the user login, the window opens up for just a flash and then disappears. The Orbiter folder is under the Program Files directory, and all permissions seem to be accurate.

Does anybody know of any DLL's or any file of that nature that may cause Orbiter to just crash out under a non-admin login with no error message or anything?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.



Laptop is a HP6730b, brand new, no other issues whatsoever with any other installed software. Just Orbiter giving me a headache

Try installing to My Documents folder on each of the user's computers.

 

[Woo482]

It should run fine I have used it on accounts other than my administrator account.

 

[Hielor]

If I were to bet that you were on Vista, would I win that bet?

It could be a UAC thing. Try installing it somewhere other than the Program Files directory.

 

[Woo482]

you have UAC on ? that's your problem I would disable it if I was you

 

[tblaxland]

you have UAC on ? that's your problem I would disable it if I was you

Perhaps not such a good idea for a camp computer...

 

[movieman]

You probably need to give all users write access to the directories where Orbiter is installed; it likes to write files into those directories (e.g. log files, scenarios, etc), so they need to be writable by all users who run it.

Would be nice if the next release wrote all files under 'My Documents'.

 

[Tommy]

Limited User accounts don't have usually have write access to anything other than that users "My Documents" folder. This means that Orbiter wouldn't be able to write to the Orbiter.log, or the Current.scn.

The solution, as mentioned above, is to install Orbiter into the User's "My Documents" folder, AKA a Local install (rather than a Global).

This is a problem with any software that tries to save any info in it's root directory, which is a bad habit left over from the old DOS based Windows. It is still a common occurance, even many Microsoft games still do this.

 

[Scarecrow]

Would be nice if the next release wrote all files under 'My Documents'.

I must reply to this with an emphatic NO. A fundamental feature of Orbiter is that it is entirely self contained. It doesn't screw with the registry. It doesn't leave little bits of itself all over the machine. It is all in one place. In addition to system administration benefits, this allows you to do nice things like put it on a USB flash drive and run it on any windows machine without any trouble, and without modifying the host. I know of no other program of comparable complexity that can do that. If orbiter ran on Linux (or Unix, or BSD, or whatever), then I could give you viable solutions to problems like this, but I'm not a Windows expert, so I can't help you.

 

[mjessick]

The user output/input directory could be configurable, at least, in the gui.

 

[Tommy]

Another advantage to having all the saved files in the orbiter root directory (rather than off in "My Docs") is that it's much easier to have multiple installs with different configurations for different purposes.

What would be really nice is if Windows had a better (like perhaps POSIX style) file permissions, even in the "Home" versions. And if it used them by default instead of making you reconfigure the entire install if you decide to enable them. Groups are a good thing!

 

[HiPotOk1978]

I run my Orbiter from the root of C: on a Vista machine on my account on the PC. Not that hard to give everyone group access to your orbiter directory and no more UAC problems or the need to disable the UAC and lower your security settings on the computer