Chapter 2: Platform Details

Windows 10 and 11 User Account Control (UAC)

Windows 10 and 11 use a feature called User Account Control (UAC) to control privileges and automatically reduce the potential of security breaches in the operation system. However, UAC limits your accessibility to system areas and can cause unpredictable behavior in Ansys, Inc. products.

Ansys, Inc. requires that you have full administrative privileges when installing any software on Microsoft Windows 10 and 11. Non-administrative accounts do not usually have the permissions required to access system areas that installation programs often need to modify. "Full administrative privileges" means that you are running as administrator with UAC turned off, or you are running as administrator with UAC turned on and Run as Administrator selected. Because of changes to the UAC functionality, it is necessary that you right-click and select Run as Administrator from the context menu when installing to Windows 10 or 11.

Recommended Installation Options:

  • UAC turned off and install with full administrative privileges (using Run as Administrator from the context menu)

When installing Ansys, Inc. products, we strongly recommend that you use the recommended options above. If UAC is enabled, we recommend that you turn UAC off before installing Ansys, Inc. products, and then turn it back on when finished installing. You must be an administrative user in order to disable UAC.

Follow the instructions for your operating system for disabling UAC.

Once you have installed your applications, you can enable UAC again.

Installing with UAC on Windows 10 and 11

If you cannot disable UAC and need to install with UAC on, you must run all applications, including the installation setup, as an administrator. Otherwise, the files may be written to AppData\Local\VirtualStore\<path> (or similar) rather than directly to <path>, if <path> is a protected directory (such as C:\Program Files). As a result, some applications and utilities may behave unpredictably.

If you cannot disable UAC, you should perform the following functions:

  • Always run ANSLIC_ADMIN, the File Association utility, and the Product & CAD Configuration Manager by selecting the utility or application from the Start menu and right-mouse clicking and selecting Run as Administrator.

  • Set your Start menu shortcuts to always run as administrator with the following procedure (or similar):

    1. Right-click the shortcut you wish to modify and select Open File Location from the options located at the bottom of your screen.

    2. Right-click the shortcut file that is displayed and click Properties from the menu.

    3. From the Properties dialog box, click Advanced on the Shortcut tab.

    4. Select Run as administrator and click OK.

    5. Click OK.

Notes about UAC

When installing Ansys, Inc. products, including the license manager, on Windows 10 machines, you need to be aware of several factors involving User Access Control (UAC):

You should install the Ansys, Inc. License Manager using the same permissions as you used to install the product.

If you install both the product and the license manager with full administrative privileges, the product and licensing installation and configuration will proceed as normal.

If you install as an administrative user with UAC turned on, you may encounter unpredictable behavior with both the product and license manager installations and subsequent behavior. As an administrator, you should choose to install and run applications with full administrative privileges to avoid any unpredictable situations. We strongly recommend against running with UAC on and not selecting Run as Administrator. These situations are described below.

  1. If you have UAC turned on and you do not install (and run) with full administrative privileges, be aware that files may be written to and read from the %localappdata%\VirtualStore\ location (in the case of licensing, to %localappdata%\VirtualStore\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\Shared Files\Licensing) instead of to the <os drive>.

    In this situation, ANSLIC_ADMIN settings, such as Specify the License Server Machine, will indicate that files are being written to and read from <os drive>\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\Shared Files\Licensing. Log files may behave in the same way. However, when you view the ansyslmd.ini file located in <os drive>\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\Shared Files\Licensing, you will not see the ANSLIC_ADMIN settings you specified.

  2. To ensure that files are correctly written to and read from <os drive>\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\Shared Files\Licensing, you should always run with full administrative privileges by selecting Run as Administrator.

  3. If you are not running with full administrative privileges, you will not be able to use those ANSLIC_ADMIN options that require administrative privileges, such as starting and stopping the license manager.