We’re encountering this bug since a couple of versions. Current installed version is 4.2.27.
Scenario:
A Win 10 workstation in an corporate network. The workstation is used by multiple users (e.g. User1, User2, User3,…) with individual access credentials. Users have no administrator privileges. Administrators are typically not present on site.
The problem:
An administrator grants User1 temporary administrator privileges to install Pix4Dmapper. Administrator privileges are revoked after the installation. Pix4Dmapper runs fine.
User1 logs out of Windows and User2 logs in. Now User2 has 3 options to start Pix4D:
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By clicking the desktop icon of Pix4Dmapper. This works fine.
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By clicking on a .p4d project file. This does NOT work. Pix4Dmapper starts the installer but can’t finish due to missing administrator privileges.
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By clicking on Pix4Dmapper in the Windows Start Menu. This does NOT work (same problem as in No. 2))
Especially No. 2 is extremely annoying.
We found a few workarounds but none of them are a good:
a) Every user of the workstation needs temporary administrator privileges to run the proposed setup. Once the setup is finished, everything is fine and administrator privileges can be revoked. However, this requires a lot of time, as an administrator needs to manually grant administrator privileges to every user. In our case we’re talking of up to 10 users and 5 workstations. The procedure has to be done after every Pix4Dmapper update.
b) To fix problem No. 2 (starting .p4d project files) every user can select the pix4dmapper.exe as default program to run. This works but is still annoying.
The problem seems to be that Pix4Dmapper writes user-specific entries into the registry during the first start after a Pix4Dmapper installation or update.