[v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free Space

Joel

Joel

Active Member
No, don't move your desktop/laptop to a higher location, please. :D

You are running Windows Vista. And even though you are an Administrator, you aren't given God status until you tell Windows, look, I know what I'm doing, so leave me alone. By default, Vista assumes that you don't know what you are doing and so blocks what it thinks may be suspicious.

And Erasing Free Space is suspicious (though it is actually not, but Windows doesn't know that.)

That's what is meant by "Elevation Required": You have to look Windows in the eye and say "Let me have my way". To do that, close Eraser (check that no Eraser is running in your system notification area (a.k.a.system tray), then Right-click on the Eraser shortcut either on your Desktop or in the Start Menu and select Run as Administrator. There should be a little shield beside the menu entry.

Then run the task again.
 
Re: "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free Space

I would like to use Eraser to erase the unused space on my C drive. My preference is to do this running Eraser from the shell extension. I have followed your instructions to exit Eraser and select "Run as Administrator" by right clicking. This, of course, opens Eraser. Then I open Explorer and right click my C drive and select "Erase Unused Space". However, I still get the following error message:
Information:
Statistics:
Erased area = 0 bytes
Cluster tips = 0 bytes
Data written = 0 bytes
Write time = 0.00 s

Failures:
Error: Erasing the Free Space of a drive requires elevation
Error: Erasing the Free Space of a drive requires elevation
Error: Failed to erase file names from drive C:\, don't know why exactly.
Click to expand...

How do I get Vista to let me do what I want? Short of that how do I erase the unused space on C via Eraser's "on-Demand" interface. Thank you in advance for your help.
 
Re: "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free Space

What you've described only works for Eraser 6, to erase Free Space on Eraser 5 you have to use the on-demand interface.

Joel
 
Using Windows 7 as an Administrator, Eraser 6.0.6.1376 using the "Run as Administrator" start option, cannot run the "Unused disk space" option as I have a "completed with errors" message returned and the following in the log.

Session: 15 December 2009 17:26:22 Error The program does not have the required permissions to erase the unused space on disk. Run the program as an administrator and retry the operation.

Don't know what to do next - any help would be appreciated.

Argy
 
You'll need to close all running instances of Eraser (including the one in the tray) before running another instance as an administrator.
 
Thanks. I actually knew about that and had checked, but Win 7 had conveniently hidden the icons for me. I only found the Eraser icon when I proped deeper. Thanks again.
 
Is there a UAC confirmation dialog planned for Eraser 6 that will make starting Eraser 6 with Admin rights unneccessary?
 
That was the whole purpose of running Eraser 6 as a service. Eraser 6 is a step up from Eraser 5 in that the erasing program and the initiating program are separate processes, each with its own privilege level. So now you could initiate free space erasures from the shell, for example. But that doesn't mean the program still needs to run as an administrator. There's no way around that (deliberately!)

Eraser 6.2 is supposed to run as a service. This is merely in the planning stage. Services do not have the standard user/administrator dichotomy so they are always running as an administrator. Building on the framework used for Eraser 6, 6.2 should allow this to happen.

But it is a lot of work and I can't give an ETA.
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

I have right clicked and and clicked run as administrator and still get the "Session: December-04-10 10:46:40 PM
December-04-10 10:46:40 PM Error The program does not have the required permissions to erase the unused space on disk. Run the program as an administrator and retry the operation." message. What next?
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

You probably forgot to exit Eraser: "To do that, close Eraser (check that no Eraser is running in your system notification area (a.k.a.system tray)..."
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

Just thought others might want this info, since I've used Eraser for years and just ran across the issue in this thread...

In Win7-64 I was having the "Elevation Required" message and found that opening Eraser as Administrator still didn't do the trick when trying to erase a USB external hard drive I've used across several computers and operating systems over the past several years. I even did a full reformat of the USB drive, but still was getting the same error.

So I right-clicked on the drive letter to reach its Properties page, and in the Security tab noticed that neither "Authenticated Users" nor "Administrators" nor "Users" had full permissions to the drive letter object. I hit "Edit", clicked on each Group/user name, checked the box next to "Full Control" & applied changed for each group/user and closed the properties dialog boxes, and restarted Eraser as Administrator. Now the drive is happily erasing.
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

Thank you for this very helpful advice. I have included a reference to your post with the link to this thread in the 'sticky' FAQ topic on Common Eraser questions, to help users to find it.

David
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

That works! Why isn't that info in the manual? It would help if there were even a section on Error Messages. Thanks for the help. :D
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

fhs347 said:
That works! Why isn't that info in the manual? It would help if there were even a section on Error Messages. Thanks for the help. :D
Click to expand...
I believe that Joel is planning to update the documentation for version 6.2. In the meantime, the FAQ topic 'Common Eraser Questions' is a continuously updated list of known issues and the means of resolving them.

David
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

There is another interesting thing on Win7 64bit Prof. I had the same error problem on erasing free diskspace. Nothing worked. Close Program, run as admin... carefully looking for an instance of eraser that is still runing in the background after closing the program... When you are going to the programfolder, where eraser is installed, you find the eraser.exe -> right klick -> options -> kompatibility there is a little box in the bottom "run as admin" (sorry, i have the german version of win7 and i don't know if it is the same in the english version). Mark it and everything works wonderful. After this boxchecking you need'nt right klick on any link to the exe and klicking run as admin. It works on doubbleclick. I have no idea, why this is the "right" "run as admin" option.
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

The reason why Eraser is not run elevated by default (as other utility programs, such as CCleaner, are) is that drag and drop is not possible between an normal user folder and an elevated Eraser window; the permissions are different.

Closing the running instance of Eraser is done by right-clicking on the system tray icon and selecting 'Exit'; this must be done before running Eraser as administrator.

David
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

To add on to David, that effectively prevents non-administrators from using Eraser as well; hence I do not recommend doing this. Eraser should work fine without need that checked. If it does not you may have a separate problem that may require some troubleshooting -- if that is the case, please open a new thread on the Support forum.
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

Joel, I wanted to say thanks for the nice repeating of the hint to quit the currently running instance in the taskbar. I tried a couple times before seeing this thread which helped me realize there was another version (non-admin) running that didn't have the admin privs. Thanks again!
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

Just a note to whomever this may help: I am running Win7 and encountered permissions error, (no permission to erase unused space, run as administrator, etc.) I tried closing everything and it did not work. No indications whatsoever that Eraser was running. However, when I opened the task manager, took a look at the processes, it was in fact running. I ended the process, went back and ran as administrator, as you suggested, and everything worked fine. Thank you for the great software and for the help!
 
Re: [v5&6] "Elevation Required" message while Erasing Free S

Thanks for the feedback, I think it could have been hidden behind the task bar or among the hidden task bar icons. If there are more reports of this then it'll warrant investigation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top