SOLVED Windows 8 - Privilege Issue

I have a Win 8 machine. Whenever I try to copy something to the c: drive I get a privilege error like this:



I've tried changing the Owner of c: to Everyone but it still won't let me copy to c: drive.

How do I fix this? Thanks.

Try turning UAC off.

I assume your account has full administrator privs?

Thanks Janus. I already set UAC to the lowest rung (Never notify me) when I first installed Win 8. Yes, my account has full Administrator privileges.

So how do I turn UAC off? Thanks.

You did when you set to never notify (essentially).

Are you able to save anything to the local/root of the C drive? If you already have the file downloaded and you drag it there from your Desktop for instance?

Also, any major reason you are wanting to save files to the root of C: in the first place?

The error message in my 1st post was when I tried to copy to the root of the c:.

Anyway, Android SDK and Flashtool (for my Android phone) are installed in c:. I need to copy image files to them for flashing.

Of course, I can reinstall them in another drive. But I'd like to be able to completely access c:. Like my Win 7 machine. I can't do this yet because I'm still not completely familiar with Win 8.

Thanks Janus.

I found this to be necessary only on certain Windows 8 laptops but not others. Even with UAC off, on them I needed to go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System

Key: EnableLUA needs to have Value data: 0


But if you do this, you may not be able to run Windows Store Metro Apps I think. But the nags may be gone.

@c627627:

I won't mind the nagging if it will allow me to copy files to c:. It just nags and won't allow me to copy.

I could do the registry hack. But I would like to run the Store Apps to fully understand Win 8.

Thank you.

c627627 said:

Try the Right Click > Run as Admin option, does that work?

Click to expand...

Sorry. I don't understand. I'm not trying to run a program. Just copy files to c:.

I copy-pasted the wrong thing from my notes, sorry.

I know that I resolved it by changing that reg entry but I think it may have side effects of no metro apps.

Worst case scenario would be to make .reg files, one Enable, the other Disable and double click on them when needed, but I hope someone else will come along to suggest the real ownership solution to this.

One word of caution, I would image your OS partition before doing major ownership changes on the system, because of potential side-effects. It's one thing if you do one or two reg changes but any operations affecting the entire C: drive, I would image to be safe in case major changes have major side effects.

When I played around with that trying to resolve a similar issue, I had to reimage back after major changes to all files on C: drive ownership messed things up for me when I did it.

Hi guys. I got it fixed.

I don't know what I did as I googled "A Required Privilege Is Not Held by the Client" and just followed all the recommendations. Don't know which one worked. But my guess is this:

Local Security Policy -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode.

Switched this from Enabled to Disabled. Rebooted. Works!

Thank you all.

Oh you had Windows 8 Pro?


If that's the one that worked, I wonder what the equivalent reg file is for Windows 8 non Pro laptops?

It's not a reg file really. To get into "Local Security Policy" you need to type "secpol.msc" in "Run". Don't know if it's the same for non-Pro Win 8.

I also did an experiment. I went back in into "User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" and enabled it. Rebooted. I couldn't copy to C: again. Disabled it again and rebooted. All's well again.