I’m prepared to guess that a good half of my Windows-using blog readers are either home users, self-employed or otherwise simply do NOT have an administrator other than themselves. In order to rename a drive on my Windows 11 Pro machine, I’ve just had to bypass a warning telling me I need administrative permissions – I’m the only person in my house that even remotely looks like an ADMINISTRATOR…. HOW ANNOYING IS THAT? Imagine owning your own company and having an employee constantly spouting “you need to check with the boss” !!
In the end I was simply trying to rename a new hard drive – a 2-second job… yes? No! Not in Windows 11 Pro, it seems.
My Windows PC INSISTED on putting up a message saying I need administrative permission, even though it then proceeded to let me change the drive name. How dumb is THAT?
Actually it’s a little more complex than that, as half way through writing this rant, our POWER WENT OFF. Thankfully I write my blogs in Chrome which is always happy to fully restore tabs after a power cut otherwise I’d be in trouble on a regular basis as our power company is about as much use as some (not all) of Microsoft’s designers… no apparent reason for the power failure (certainly not bad weather) and no apology, no compensation, nothing – and that’s regular here.
Anyway, I digress… I’ve put up with these Windows administrative issues for so long, I decided it was time to go look for solutions. I can’t count how many sites I went off looking and found advise that did NOT work.. including this REDDIT nonsense and many more Q&As like it. Ok, cutting to the quick… I went off to COPILOT which on it’s 4th attempt gave me an answer that worked – while sensibly warning me that disabling the message could raise security risks – you’ve been warned…. So – Windows+R, regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and find EnableLUA which will be set to 1. Set to 0, save and reboot – end of annoying and inappropriate messages. Done.
Just for fun, go to COPILOT and see if you get the same response… here’s exactly what I typed into CoPilot: How do I stop windows 11 saying I need administrator permission – there is noone else using this computer?
While I’m here, a nice word for Amazon.es and the makers of my TopGro Mini PC I9… 2 days ago I finally decided to check into an issue where my (personally added) internal SSD (drive D:) would either fail completely or just write INCREDIBLY slowly. Where do you start? Faulty disk? Faulty connection? Faulty PC? Well, it just so happens I have a second PC. I’m using the PC I bought less than 2 years ago – Topgro (details in link to my blog article), as my original Beelink GTR5, good as it is, is too slow for games. I put the SSD into a USB3 adaptor and onto the Beelink – SAME ISSUE, occasionally crashing the PC and always running (writing) FAR, FAR too slowly. So I reformatted the drive and tried to copy some files onto it (thankfully it mainly held my videos and they are backed up on a NAS – could have been worse). Working? NO.
Having decided the drive was definitely shot – I got onto Topgro support and within hours got the info I needed to install a second M2 drive rather than an SSD (I figured I may as well go for a faster solution while I was on). Why did I need help? Their second M.2 slot simply states SATA – and has 2 slots along one end. Unfortunately all the drives that Amazon have that say M2 SATA have THREE slots. The guy from Topgro told me not to worry – the drive I’d pointed out, regardless of number of slots – IS compatible he said… I ordered it from Amazon yesterday, plugged it in after it arrived this morning, I can confirm it installed and formatted in a minute or so, then it accepted read and write of some large test files, no issues. And yes it’s still there after the unfortunate power cut I griped about, above.
So, good support from Topgro (see the blog entry link above – there’s more of interest added at the end of it), I’d already been onto Amazon and told them about the problem with my 18 month old 2.5″ SSD – “no problem sir – we’ll offer a full a refund, could take 3-5 days to refund to the original payment mechanism”. Took only hours to get the refund (that’s bit unusual) after I returned the drive (no packaging needed, just a return code they sent me by email) so last night I ordered the M2 SATA drive I refer to above – again from Amazon.
All in, a successful day.