Player Version#: 1.0.0.792
The installation for the deskop Windows app rebooted the computer without warning during the installation. That isn’t acceptable on any installer.
It also only installs with full Admin rights. Any modern application should be installable without having admin rights by installing to the local user profile.
Why? There is something to be said by installing in the program files and not the users profile. Also you making the app restrictive to that user only by placing in a user profile. There might be other users of the computer. Under your logic and having 5 users then that’s 5 separate installs.
Think about M$ Office.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-much-space-mb-gb-does-microsoft-office-takes/289c224a-b870-4b4f-a413-95bd657959e4
https://products.office.com/en-us/office-system-requirements#coreui-contentrichblock-1zj29rj
That’s 10+ GB for a program that only needs 2GB.
Lucky for me I had opened app that stopped reboot - this was very surprising as the app did not ask but just after install finished started rebooting 
That’s a choice the user has to make, not the app developper.
That’s sometimes impossible. Some apps require admin rights to make certain changes to the system.
Not only that, if it was left to the user then your kiddies can install anything they wanted to on your account and on theirs. User permissions exists for a reason.
Permissions are here and work well. Why reinvent the wheel.
And leaving it in the user profiles can leave you open to malware.
This app doesn’t require admin rights. It’s a video player for god’s sake.
In your example, if your kids don’t have admin rights to install the application, do you really think that’s the end of the story? You’re preventing installation, not execution. Anyone could download a zip, decompress to a folder on the desktop, and run the app.
And again, how you handle your computer and its user accounts is your business, not Plex’s. You should be able to decide how applications are installed.
Are you kidding? I too thought so til I installed and used it. It has full ADMIN rights to your sever. So, for example you can create new libraries, delete existing libraries, delete media, etc… Of course you need the login credentials to access a(your) plex account but to say it’s a video player is like saying Windows is just a way to the internet.
Do you have this issue with everyone? I only known maybe a handful of installers that didn’t require admin rights and only a couple that wanted to install in a user profile.
Plex installers are not unique, they follow the standard.
And to allow installers to execute without the need for admin rights opens a backdoor to everything bad.
Would we be here talking about this if it was malware or virus that auto-installed from double-clicking the installer?
Having full admin rights on the server (with credentials) doesn’t mean it should have admin rights on my client machine…
Windows has notoriously always been poor with user account rights. People are so used to just installing without thinking, ever since Windows 95, that nobody thinks twice about security.
A normal user of a computer should not have admin rights, especially not just at the click of button. Look at how Linux and MacOS handle that situation.
I understand that some programs could require admin rights to install and sometimes even for execution (when you need hardware access for instance), but for a freaking video player, that’s ridiculous.
Installing any app with admin privileges basically gives full control of your machine to the app developper. Hardly a nice situation.
Then I guess to will need to try and modify the installer manifest to “asInvoker” but it is a NSIS installer…
For those of you that don’t like the installer requiring admin rights then just use your favorite achiever program(such as 7zip) and extract the contents to a folder.
In an “ideal” world (on Windows), the installer should prompt the user about installing for the current user or for all users (and prompt for admin rights in that case, warning him about the implications).
The new Plex installer is definitely not the only app with that problem of course, but hopefully one day, people will realize that pressing Next Next Next as fast as possible on an installer with admin rights, could eventually lead to the installer leaking out all your personal data (as well as every other account on the machine), and/or install unnecessary programs (ex: malwares).
Obviously, since we tend to trust the installer provider, this is very unlikely. But if that were to happen, I’d rather have the malware only be able to access my data and not everyone else’s, and not being able to mess with my Windows installation.
Well, okay… You make it sound like all users are an administrator and/or have administrative reasons to use the computer. I’ll always believe the admin rights are for the administrator of the machine and not the current user. Just imagine kiosks, schools, libraries.
It’s like giving Manage Users of plex the admin rights to do as they please such as adding/deleting libraries/media.
Uh, this is a feature of Windows and the Windows Installer system, the Per-User Installation Context. It is how it is supposed to work.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/installation-context
And I wrote MSI installation packages for quite a few years.
I wrote a few myself but I had to make it on a global scale
You know what… My experience from this comes from being a sys admin for many years. I NEVER let the users install junk on their workstations without my direct approval. Per-User Installs are a nightmare!!
The problem with Windows, is that most user accounts are admin accounts. But very few people realize the risks associated. You assume that every Plex user knows what they are doing, and that everyone of them is a competent sysadmin, with admin rights. That shouldn’t be the case.
For reference
Seems the team is looking into it.
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