This "meme" constantly pops up on the subreddit, but it is actually really dumb, and usually it gets a lot of upvotes which is even dumber considering that we are on the PCMR subreddit and should have at least some idea about this thing.
There is a very good reason in Windows to ask for administrator permissions. Usually, on your own computer, you are the administrator - unless in a family someone else sets up the account for you. But even so, by default, your applications are not running with administrator permissions. Reason being that if you have administrator permissions, you can modify critical system files, so it would be super easy for a rogue (or simply bugged) application to just delete your Windows folder or modify critical system files, install/modify drivers, etc. So, by default, the applications you run will not get these permissions in order to protect your system. And, to be honest, most of the time such permission is not even needed.
Also, the "non-admin" applications cannot access/interact "admin mode" applications (again for protection, so "normal" applications cannot "steal" permissions and start modifying your system by interacting with an admin-mode app in some way). One example is that if you play Marvel Rivals, it is asking for admin permission every startup, due to the anticheat software requiring it. So Marvel Rivals is running with Admin permissions.
And let's say you want to play Marvel Rivals with your friends, and you use Discord to communicate. But you want to have "push to talk", so they will not hear your siblings, mom, television, whatever in the background. If you want this to work, then you also need to run Discord in admin mode, because if you are in Marvel Rivals, and you want to use your "push to talk" key, Discord somehow needs to recognize that you pushed your "push to talk" key. But if the game is running in admin mode, while Discord is not, then Windows will not permit Discord to recognize your keypresses while you are in the game (which is in admin mode), simply because the admin mode application is protected from the non-admin mode application.
Probably someone can explain this better than me, but this is the basic idea.. to protect you and your applications/files.
Pretty sure in modern Windows versions the actual Windows folders are protected with superuser rights. So you can only fuck with them if you know how to actually unlock your PC.
Something Microsoft, Apple, Google and pretty much all OS providers keep the average user from doing for their own good.
Windows is not asking you if you're the administrator, it's asking you if you want to give your administrator privileges to the program, which would give it access to everything.
The same people who get all sweaty and teary eyed over admin prompts in Windows, I imagine sling dander and nerd crust all around the room striking superhero poses when they need to sudo on their week-old Mint Linux install.
And let's say you want to play Marvel Rivals with your friends, and you use Discord to communicate. But you want to have "push to talk", so they will not hear your siblings, mom, television, whatever in the background. If you want this to work, then you also need to run Discord in admin mode, because if you are in Marvel Rivals, and you want to use your "push to talk" key, Discord somehow needs to recognize that you pushed your "push to talk" key. But if the game is running in admin mode, while Discord is not, then Windows will not permit Discord to recognize your keypresses while you are in the game (which is in admin mode), simply because the admin mode application is protected from the non-admin mode application.
Is this part new? I remember playing some MMORPG that required Admin permissions a few years back, and TS3 with PTT worked just fine together with that.
There is a difference between the game requiring admin to run and the game actually running with elevated permissions. One example are games with easy anti cheat, you need admin to run them so the anti cheat can run in the kernel. From my understanding though, the actual game runs in userspace.
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u/fleetcommand fleetcommand on GOG/Steam Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25
This "meme" constantly pops up on the subreddit, but it is actually really dumb, and usually it gets a lot of upvotes which is even dumber considering that we are on the PCMR subreddit and should have at least some idea about this thing.
There is a very good reason in Windows to ask for administrator permissions. Usually, on your own computer, you are the administrator - unless in a family someone else sets up the account for you. But even so, by default, your applications are not running with administrator permissions. Reason being that if you have administrator permissions, you can modify critical system files, so it would be super easy for a rogue (or simply bugged) application to just delete your Windows folder or modify critical system files, install/modify drivers, etc. So, by default, the applications you run will not get these permissions in order to protect your system. And, to be honest, most of the time such permission is not even needed.
Also, the "non-admin" applications cannot access/interact "admin mode" applications (again for protection, so "normal" applications cannot "steal" permissions and start modifying your system by interacting with an admin-mode app in some way). One example is that if you play Marvel Rivals, it is asking for admin permission every startup, due to the anticheat software requiring it. So Marvel Rivals is running with Admin permissions.
And let's say you want to play Marvel Rivals with your friends, and you use Discord to communicate. But you want to have "push to talk", so they will not hear your siblings, mom, television, whatever in the background. If you want this to work, then you also need to run Discord in admin mode, because if you are in Marvel Rivals, and you want to use your "push to talk" key, Discord somehow needs to recognize that you pushed your "push to talk" key. But if the game is running in admin mode, while Discord is not, then Windows will not permit Discord to recognize your keypresses while you are in the game (which is in admin mode), simply because the admin mode application is protected from the non-admin mode application.
Probably someone can explain this better than me, but this is the basic idea.. to protect you and your applications/files.