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Installing / updating an Adobe AIR application without an administrator

Can non-Administrators be allowed to install, update, or remove the Adobe AIR application on Windows?

I created an Adobe AIR application and packaged it as a .air package using the standard AIR mechanism for creating deployment packages. If a regular or Power user tries to install this AIR application, the application event log shows an error indicating that administrative rights are required. And even if the user rises during the installation, administrative rights are still necessary for updating using the AIR automated update system (since the update is, in essence, behind the scenes, removing the .msi package, followed by installing another .msi package).

Is there any way around this?

I have tried so far:

  • Using Group Policy Editor, installing Windows Installer to upgrade during installation. It does not work because AIR is trying to install the installation "for all users."
  • Specifying my documents as an installation directory. It does not work because AIR is trying to install the installation "for all users."
  • Giving the user Change access to the Program Files folder, where the application will usually be located. It does not work, since this is not a problem with file permissions.
  • Providing the user with a Power User. It does not work because AIR is trying to install the installation "for all users."

I assume that both installation and updating will work fine for the user if

  • the AIR installer will try to install the "just for me" installation instead of the "for all users" installation and
  • the user was a Power user and maybe
  • The application was installed in My Documents

I also assume that this problem does not exist on OSX and Linux, as they have more intuitive concepts for installing applications for each user.

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2 answers

EDIT: As with Adobe AIR 3, you can use a "captive working environment" to avoid installing AIR for the administrator. See Descriptions here and here . Disclaimer - I have not actually tried this.

ORIGINAL answer for pre AIR 3:

There seems to be no way around this under the admin section

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This description of using the Air SDK to run the application can also work on windows: http://agoln.net/archives/106 Not sure how this interacts with automatic updating ...

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