Home → Troubleshooting → All Products: Startup → Running DecisionTools Add-in “as Administrator” Can Block Future Access to Registry Keys that Store Preferences and Other Information

2.1. Running DecisionTools Add-in “as Administrator” Can Block Future Access to Registry Keys that Store Preferences and Other Information

Symptoms

@RISK 8.0-8.1.1: “Access to the registry key… is denied” when changing preferences or other defaults.

All other add-ins, and @RISK version 7.6.1 or earlier: Changes to preferences and applications settings sometime not being remembered.

Applies to:

All Products Version 8.1.1 or earlier.

Description

All the DecisionTools add-in products (version 8.1.1 or earlier) have a flaw that occurs if the very first time you run any DecisionTools add-in, you choose to run it and/or Microsoft Excel “as administrator.” (Running a product as administrator is often referred to as running “with elevation” or “with elevated privileges” and those terms will be used in this document.) In that situation, subsequent use of the add-ins without those same elevated privileges can result in the add-in being unable to retain changes of different preferences and settings to the system registry where they are stored. In @RISK versions 8.0 – 8.1.1, you’ll get warning messages telling you that “access to the registry key” is denied. In earlier versions of @RISK, and all the other DecisionTools add-ins, the problem will occur silently. No error message will indicate the problem, but changes to the add-in preferences or other permanent settings may not hold when the add-in is restarted.

The problem occurs because when various registry keys were created with elevated privileges, they were incorrectly restricted from being changed by software that didn’t have those elevated privileges.

Please note: This is not a problem if you are running on an administrator account. The problem only manifests itself when running with administrator elevation.

Fix in Version 8.2

This issue will be fixed for all products in version 8.2.

However, if your registry is already in the bad state from a previous version of the software, you still may want to follow the steps below to reset the registry.

Workarounds:

Option 1: Continue to Run as Administrator

A simple workaround for this issue is to continue to run as administrator. However, this might not be convenient or desirable.

Option 2: Reset the Registry

A more comprehensive solution is to remove the portion of the registry that was created with incorrectly elevated privilege requirements and then rerun the software without elevation. This allows those keys to be recreated with the correct non-elevated privileges. There are two side effects to this approach:

It will cause you to lose any preferences, defaults, and application settings that you have configured previously.
The software may forget what license you are using. This, however, is easily corrected by going to the product’s License Manager, clicking the “Select License” button, and choosing your license from the list.

To reset the registry:

Close Excel and all Palisade software.
Click » Start » Run, enter the command REGEDIT and click OK.
Locate the key “\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Palisade”
Right-click on the “Palisade” key and choose the Rename command.
Rename the key “Palisade-Old”

Here we have renamed the bad key as “Palisade-Old” instead of deleting it. This gives you the option of restoring this key if things do not work correctly.

If you have questions, feel free to reach out to support@palisade.com and don't forget to include your serial number in your request.

Note: A valid and current maintenance plan is needed for you to get our assistance, if it's expired, feel free to contact sales@palisade.com to renew it.

Last Update: June 6th, 2023

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