User setup for Windows

Announced last release, the user setup package for Windows is now available on stable. Installing the user setup does not require Administrator privileges as the location will be under your user Local AppData (LOCALAPPDATA) folder. User setup also provides a smoother background update experience.

Download User Setup

If you are a current user of the system-wide Windows setup, you will be prompted to install user setup, which we recommend using from now on. Don't worry, all your settings and extensions will be kept during the transition. During installation, you will also be prompted to uninstall the system-wide setup.

Reference: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_26#_user-setup-for-windows

If you log in as an admin user and try to install the user version of vs code you get the warning. If you go ahead and install then your vs code won't be able to get update notifications or be able to auto update. If this is a problem for you the solution is to not run the install directly but to run it as follows:

runas /machine:x86 /trustlevel:0x20000 vscodeinstaller.exe

The above will run the always x86 installer exe and install your selected version as a regular user. trustlevel x20000.

Answer found at this link: How to install application as regular user if your are logged in as Administrative User

Not as simple as I had hoped. After install that avoids the warning you are still running code as admin because you are in the admin group. So... still no auto update and you still get that annoying warning.

Make a shortcut with:

C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /machine:amd64 /trustlevel:0x20000 "C:\Users\brook\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\code.exe"

Put it on your desktop and run it.

Windows will push all your "open with code" double click on files into the running version.

That's not the fix. "Run as Administrator" was never ticked in the first place. The problem is the installer itself. It keeps running as Admin even though we never did Run as Admin. When double-clicking the installer it keeps saying "This User installer is not meant to be run as an Administrator. If you would like to install for all users in this system, download the system installer instead from https://code.visualstudio.com" even though we never run as admin.

Hi Bill,

Open this folder:

"C:\Users%username%\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code"

Right-click "Code.exe" and click Properties.

Select the "Compatibility" tab.

Uncheck "Run this program as an administrator" if it's enabled.

(I see you checked the shortcut properties. But the above is a separate setting.)

If that doesn't help, let me know if this problem is seen for other apps (e.g... Office apps).

Launch msinfo32.exe, press Ctrl + S to save the entries to an NFO file.

Please upload the NFO log and share it on OneDrive.

It's clear I have the "user-setup installation" of VS Code. The "Learn more" link explains:

The user setup does not require Administrator privileges to run as the location will be under your user Local AppData (LOCALAPPDATA) folder. Since it requires no elevation, the user setup is able to provide a smoother background update experience. This is the preferred way to install VS Code on Windows.

System-setup installation

One solution (as suggested both here and here) is to use the system-setup installation of VS Code instead.

The system setup requires elevation to Administrator privileges to run and will place the installation under the system's Program Files. The in-product update flow will also require elevation, making it less streamlined than the user setup. On the other hand, installing VS Code using the system setup means that it will be available to all users in the system.

• The system-setup installation requires Admin, which works for me (I "Run as Administrator" anyway!).
• Also the system-setup installation is available to all users (side-effect, this may be a good thing or bad thing depending on your circumstances...)

Close and re-open VS Code as non-administrator

Another solution is simply to close all open VS code instances, then re-open VS Code as a non-administrator.

In my case VS Code automatically started updating (check the Help menu; notice the disabled "Installing updates..." message, or if that process is finished, the option might read "Restart to Update")

Check for updates (requires one of the above two)

Finally you could try to update manually by checking the Help menu option > "Check for Updates" as suggested here.

However, this option is not available while you have a user-setup installation and you "Run as Administrator", so if you want to manually Check for Updates, you must use one of the above two approaches.

Of course you could manually re-install VS Code if the other options don't work. More on VS Code's auto-updating here, and disabling it here

EDIT I agree with @Waggers' comment,

I understand that I don't need to be an administrator to get updates on the user version. I don't understand why being an administrator means I can't get automatic updates, that's completely counter-intuitive.

When I check these spots in VS Code source code where I find the message "Updates are disabled..." and the enum DisablementReason.RunningAsAdmin, I don't see comments... maybe if I checked the Git history...

My best guess is this is to prevent anyone who mistakenly thinks that "Running as Administrator" changes the scope of the installation to be more "system-wide" (which it won't, as long as you have the "user-setup installation")

Hi, I am Dave, I will help you with this.

The Visual Code installer is available as a User Installer and a System Wide installer, the User version is now the preferred version, that installs a version of Visual Code that does not require Administrator privileges and the user data for Visual Code will be stored in your AppData folder.