Access Denied when Running a game exe.

[MartinEggman]

Hey guys, I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro last night from Windows 7 Pro. It was a clean installation, the PC was reset to factory settings. I've installed Medieval 2 and Rome 1 games on my new Windows 10 and after the installation I try to launch and get the ''Access Denied Please login with administrator privileges and try again'' message.

I then go to my users tab in the control panel and it says my account is administrator, I've also tried going into the security tab on the exes and enabling full control but that doesn't work either and of course, I've tried running them as admin but nothing seems to be working.

Also, I'm using the original disk copies of the games and not the Steam versions, I've tried running some games on Steam that I have installed and they've run fine, but I don't own these 2 games on Steam.

Some help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Slashgeek]

I've read that you can convert Medieval II: Total War and Rome: Total War into a Steam installation by inputting your retail CD key into Steam, so you may want to try that. Here's one of the sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/3bhzzj/you_can_use_old_cd_keys_from_box_version_of_rome/

You may also want to try running your game exes in Compatibility Mode for Windows XP.

If you think you're actually having difficulty with administrator privileges, try the following:

Open an elevated command prompt by typing "CMD" into Start, right-clicking Command Prompt, and selecting "Run as Administrator." Once in the prompt, type "net user administrator /active:yes." Restart your computer. Now, a new Administrator account will be visible among your user accounts. Sign into this Administrator account, install your games under it, then try running the game.

Please note that this is the built-in admin account for Windows. It disables UAC prompts and may be very dangerous to use if you are infected with a virus. Disable it by following the same steps as earlier, except this time you type "net user administrator /active:no."

The problem seems to be traceable to a lack of support for certain disc-based copy protection schemes under Windows 10 - specifically, the scheme that uses "secdrv.sys." This is why converting your games to Steam is effective in restoring functionality.