I recently developed an application for Windows XP and newer which make some changes in the system registry. It has been tested on several machines and i now got an incident where a user gets the error message when launching the installer: “You must be logged in as an administrator when installing this program” on Windows XP. It’s understandable if the user don’t got any administration privileges that Windows rejects the installer.
As being the developer of the software, can I do anything to prevent this from happening? (Without doing the work not touching the registry). Or is it simply just a user problem?
What you didn’t say was what the software was going to do. If it was true administrator software, then it can require administration privileges. If it’s for a specific use and your client approves, it can require administration privileges (ask the client before assuming it’s OK). If it’s something a normal user might use, and will see use outside an enterprise that has specifically approved this,you need to find a way to make it usable by less privileged accounts, and if that includes not making changes to the system registry that’s what you’ll have to do.
Windows Vista introduced UAC, which was designed to make software like yours, which requires administrator privileges, awkward to use. This was for a reason: allowing people in general to run as administrator at all times is a big security issue. More and more enterprises are passing out computers without admin privileges, so your software will be usable on fewer and fewer corporate systems.
If this is some sort of home/personal software, requiring admin privileges is going to make users on Vista and 7 less happy with your software, and is going to perpetuate the global security issue of hordes of individual users, with no computer savvy, being on the net logged in as administrator.
Unless you’re in some sort of niche, this is not a user problem (and, if it was, do you really want to be causing your users problems?). It’s a developer problem.