Possible fix for games that want to run as Admin

[Jim Nugent]

This is a tip I stumbled onto and thought it might be of interest to the
group. My son has a graphics-intensive game (Command and Conquer: Generals)
that refused to run under his account on Windows XP Pro. He's in the "Power
Users" group. It popped an error saying "Access Denied. Try running as
Administrator." What chutzpah! I'd be d***ed before I'd let him run as Admin
to play a stupid game!

I started thinking about file permissions, but power users can write to most
reasonable places used by "legacy" apps. Registry key permission? Maybe but
I decided to go for easy first. I opened up the Local Computer Security
Group Policy and looked over the list of available user rights. I decided to
try giving him the right to "Increase Scheduling Priority." That makes sense
if it wants to run fast and use a lot of cycles. Lo and behold, the game now
runs from his Power User account!

I'm posting this because I suspect others may have encountered this problem
with games, and it's something worth trying with Electronic Arts (EA) games.
It may save you from having to let someone run as Admin, which to me is a
world class headache.

 

[Nick Kritselis [MS]]

Jim,

Thank you for posting your fix suggestion.

I'm sure others will find this information helpful.

To users not familiar with Local Security Settings, follow these steps on
the administrator account:

1) Click START->ALL PROGRAMS->ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS->LOCAL SECURITY POLICY. -
This will open the Local Security Settings screen.
2) Click the + next to LOCAL POLICIES and you should see USER RIGHTS
ASSIGNMENT. - Click to highlight this and on the right-hand screen you
should see a long list of items. One of these items should be INCREASE
SCHEDULING PRIORITY.
3) Right-click on this and choose PROPERTIES. This should open the Increase
Scheduling Priority Properties screen.
4) Click the ADD USER OR GROUP button to add the account of the Power User.

Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

On the same topic I recently encountered difficulty playing an older EA game
(from '99?): Sports Car GT. I run Windows XP home under administrator and
when trying to start the game, I got the famous message "SCGT has encountered
an error and must be terminated... Send/ Don't send".

Nothing I did seemed to help; then I reverted back to a computer state
before the update to Windows SP 2. Bingo, the game worked just fine. But I
would really prefer to be updated to the latest service pack.

Would the suggestion offered by Jim apply here? Is there something else I
can try?

 

[Nick Kritselis [MS]]

Stan S.,

I was able to get Sports Car GT running by simply applying the Windows 98/ME
Compatibility Mode. I did have the patch (version 1551) installed for the
game, which you should be able to download from Gamespot or Adrenaline Vault
if you don't already have it installed.

Hope this helps.