USB Drives needing admin rights

[Stuart_C]

Is there a sensible explanation as to why a USB drive would work fine in some comptuers but then require Admin rights on some others?

 

Actually as it type I think that someone else had the same problem on that computer. So what on the computer is missing that a USB drive won't install without admin rights?

[AngryTechnician]

This is commonly caused by a problem with the Cryptographic Services database becoming corrupted, and therefore unable to verify the digital signature on the driver the usually automatically installs for USB devices. This then causes an administrative prompt since Windows will not install 'unsigned' drivers without admin rights. You'll know if it's this problem because after supplying admin rights, you'll then be prompted to continue installing a driver that Windows cannot verify a digital signature for.

 

Several methods for resolving this are contained in the below MS article:

 

You cannot install some updates or programs

 

Although the symptoms the article talks about are different, the resolution is the same. Method #3 is the one that most commonly fixes the problem in my experience.

 

As for what causes the corruption, the most common root causes I have encountered are NTFS errors (run chkdsk) or a piece of software that has been badly re-packaged into an MSI overwriting something in the Catroot2 folder. On the network I manage, someone before my time had repackaged DirectX using WinINSTALL LE which was doing this.