Everything is Suddenly Asking for Admin Permissions: Solved

The Problem

All of a sudden, odd things have stopped working and others are asking for admin permissions. Explorer won’t let me see things I can normally see, scripts aren’t running… This seems odd, as I’m already an admin on my box. What’s going on here?

The Conditions

This has happened to me several times now, and each time the circumstances have been the same:

  • I’m Windows on a network
  • My password has changed recently
  • I haven’t logged in recently on the box where I’m having problems

This is quite a common scenario for me at work because most of my programming work is done on a VM that I very rarely restart, or even log off. At the same time, whenever my password expires I change it on my physical box rather than the VM.

The Solution

Log out and back in again.

The Reason

Your credentials for your current session are stale.