<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>VeraCrypt - Free Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid</title> <meta name="description" content="VeraCrypt is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In case an attacker forces you to reveal the password, VeraCrypt provides plausible deniability. In contrast to file encryption, data encryption performed by VeraCrypt is real-time (on-the-fly), automatic, transparent, needs very little memory, and does not involve temporary unencrypted files."/> <meta name="keywords" content="encryption, security"/> <link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div> <a href="Documentation.html"><img src="VeraCrypt128x128.png" alt="VeraCrypt"/></a> </div> <div id="menu"> <ul> <li><a href="Home.html">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/code/">Source Code</a></li> <li><a href="Downloads.html">Downloads</a></li> <li><a class="active" href="Documentation.html">Documentation</a></li> <li><a href="Donation.html">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/" target="_blank">Forums</a></li> </ul> </div> <div> <p> <a href="Documentation.html">Documentation</a> <img src="arrow_right.gif" alt=">>" style="margin-top: 5px"> <a href="Miscellaneous.html">Miscellaneous</a> <img src="arrow_right.gif" alt=">>" style="margin-top: 5px"> <a href="Using%20VeraCrypt%20Without%20Administrator%20Privileges.html">Using Without Admin Rights</a> </p></div> <div class="wikidoc"> <div> <h2>Using VeraCrypt Without Administrator Privileges</h2> <p>In Windows, a user who does not have administrator privileges <em>can</em> use VeraCrypt, but only after a system administrator installs VeraCrypt on the system. The reason for that is that VeraCrypt needs a device driver to provide transparent on-the-fly encryption/decryption, and users without administrator privileges cannot install/start device drivers in Windows.<br> <br> After a system administrator installs VeraCrypt on the system, users without administrator privileges will be able to run VeraCrypt, mount/dismount any type of VeraCrypt volume, load/save data from/to it, and create file-hosted VeraCrypt volumes on the system. However, users without administrator privileges cannot encrypt/format partitions, cannot create NTFS volumes, cannot install/uninstall VeraCrypt, cannot change passwords/keyfiles for VeraCrypt partitions/devices, cannot backup/restore headers of VeraCrypt partitions/devices, and they cannot run VeraCrypt in ‘portable’ mode.</p> <div> <table style="border-collapse:separate; border-spacing:0px; text-align:left; font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"> <tbody style="text-align:left"> <tr style="text-align:left"> <td style="text-align:left; font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color:#ff0000; padding:15px; border:1px solid #000000"> Warning: No matter what kind of software you use, as regards personal privacy in most cases, it is <em>not</em> safe to work with sensitive data under systems where you do not have administrator privileges, as the administrator can easily capture and copy your sensitive data, including passwords and keys.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> </div> </div> </div><div class="ClearBoth"></div></body></html>