Why does Minecraft require an elevated command prompt to run despite admin permissions already being granted?

Question

My son's Minecraft server is running as one of my Hyper-V Guest OS systems. It decided to have a meltdown this weekend. I was able to grab all of the data. However, I started having an interesting issue when I recovered everything and copied his Minecraft server folder.

Minecraft will now run under an elevated (Administrative) command prompt. Remember that these files were copied off the server and onto my NAS for storage during the issue. So far, I have done the following.

1. Taken ownership of the entire game folder (to local Administrators group).
2. Ensured local Administrators group can access the game folder.
3. Ensured Domain Admins are in the local Administrators group.
4. Of course, I am a domain admin.

The game will run perfectly in an elevated command prompt. The game will crash with an access denied on the world.lock file when running logged in as myself under a normal command prompt.

This smells like a permissions issue, so I ensured the permissions looked straight above and files weren't read-only. Next, it feels like a UAC issue. I temporarily disabled UAC and tested it, but it didn't help under a normal command prompt. Last, it feels like one of those attributes that get applied to files when they're copied to a network (off-system) location and are copied back, which labels them dangerous/non-executable. However, I can't find the unblock button on any of the files.

Answer 1

Likely, there is a file in another location that is being changed, perhaps in the root C:\ folder, which is verboten to non-admin changes (and should be kept that way).

Try running Minecraft as admin, while using a tool such as Nirsoft's FileActivityWatch to see what is being written. Compare with running it as a non-admin user, to see what files were not written.

Answer 2

You have given the administrators rights to the Minecraft folder, but not the logged in user.

If you alter the permissions for the folder, and give the logged in user itself read/write access to this folder, you no longer need to run the game as administrator.

You can also set the rights for the Users group. Just know that if you use the administrators group, then you basically tell the system: This is fine if run elevated.

Make sure the changes propagate to all child folders too.