KiCad installer pops UAC elevation prompt when started in all cases.
Some installers can do it at runtime only if necessary and avoid it if installation doesn’t touch program files or system registry and only affects user files. I don’t know if nsis can be configured to do the same but that would be preferable.
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That would make the installer more complex - not only actual files, but shortcuts etc. must be considered. Now the installer installs shortcuts automatically globally which needs admin rights.
That is handled by “install for all users / this user only” switch. Also installer is plenty complex already, if functionality is useful and requested, then it should be considered.
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Matter of fact is I have a netbook for freedom. But it is not ideal or this kind of work. We have “future office” here: every morning you have to carry your stuff to an empty table and in the afternoon you have to leave an empty table. No portable storage room or trolley.
Thats why I am not so eager to bring a powerful laptop every day. And I like to use KiCad to produce at least schematics for my work…
Ha Ha, IT-people working for me ?
Open-Source is the enemy !
Yes, of course. That was only a reminder to you who are going to implement it 
Hmmm, I have no knowledge how complicated such an “anyway”-button would be to implement but i think it would give win-users a lot of possiblities.
I imagine I could now use different versions in different directories. Win-User may even use USB-Sticks for daily work ?
If anyone from the developers would integrate this I can only offer him/her a lot of likes ! 
Do you want to use KiCad for your work, or to fill some free time during work hours?
If the first, then you should be able to just fill in a request form and the IT department should install KiCad for you. If it’s for free time / breaks during the work day, it’s another story.
If you’re naughty then you can put a small form factor PC behind your monitor with velcro or something and just use your own PC with your boss’ monitor / keyboard / mouse.
Maybe it’s doable to install KiCad in a virtual machine at home, and then dump the image for that setup somewhere on the 'net.
When I worked in a big company, they had their own server with downloadable Open Source and other program installers. No way they would have installed something for me, except the whole system when needed. I could have of course requested something to be added to the pool.
I wanted to use KiCad as a tool for small projects at work.
Our IT will not install anything that is not payed for officially. Open-Sorce licenses are considered high-risk and People who give away something for free are not trustworthy 
In general, everything that does NOT come from MS or SAP is not very welcome here.
But the ZIP-workaround does exactly what you recommend.
…so you are going to violate IT policy by installing KiCad instead of following policy or making your boss deal with it… Seriously, if your job involves designing schematics at this company, you make your boss escalate to get you the damn thing installed. You are opening yourself to being fired and/or in companies with exceptional bad management, legal issues because for example in the US, “exceed authorization” runs afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Hell, if they refuse KiCad, you tell your boss they better pay up that $10k for Altium
It could be argued, that if he can run it within the authorization he has been granted, he hasn’t “exceeded” his authorization…
(But I will add the disclaimer, that we are entering the wonderful world of legal speak, where words have a different meaning than how they are understood by the ‘common people’.)
I have seen such environment. They can go as far as whitelisting running executables and killing all that are not in the whitelist. The only way worth spending your time on this is to open a “ticket” and kindly ask adding this software to the collection.
You are all correct I think !
There is a big grey area here concerning what is allowed or not. Some colleagues know someone from the IT and are encouraged to operate locally as they like, to keep this away from IT. Some superiors sign special contracts for their department at their own risk. And sometimes it depends on the IT-operator you contact. I once had one who gave me admin rights for an hour to install what I need and leave him alone.
And dont forget, young colleagues do most of their private IT-work with their modern Smartphones and nobody asks how much time this takes …
Its all just a question of pain-level you are willing to suffer (for every new PC every 2 years !).
I think the real problem are not the official rules but the fact that the responsible department is allowed to make their own rules as they like.
Just in case, you could copy an existing install to a CDROM if USB are forbidden then copy it back to your doc folder or desktop, then change the read only state of the copied folder (just in case, not sure if needed). If none is allowed there is still the cloud access you could try.
As design engineers(both hardware and software), we at work asked politely to be local administrators of our workstations, admins still own the domain admin privileges and only them, but it allows us to not have our productivity reduced by imposed overwhelming IT policies.
Good IT people don’t block us, they find a solution with us to make ends meet.
All those restrictions, but they allow 7zip which is both free and open source
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Another work around is to install vmware.
Buy a cheap win7 license off eBay and setup a win7 vm on your win10 system…
Once you have that you should be able to install what you want within the cm. That worked for me in a similar situation. I setup a whole design flow that way using custom and legacy software, no dealing with IT. Don’t abuse it though, stay off internet on VM.
once setup you can simply move the vm when it is new laptop time.
If you get win 7 pro, you can have xp mode. In the end you have xp, win7 and win 10
Kevin
Hi, just as a comment:
In my particular case I can not install anything and I am not allowed to use any portable storage devices. So I can not create a special installation/VM. And I certainly dont want to buy anything from microsoft. Using windoze at work is pain enough for me 
The Problem is not the windows version - it is IT.
I have 7zip and decompressing the KiCad-Download works 100% . I would just wish the KiCad EXE could do this “officially” without 7zip or admin rights.
But I confess, this is probably a very singular demand and hard to understand for someone from outside.
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