Windows 10, PIA does not start at machine startup

cdubea

Fairly new PIA user here.  

I've got a house full of Win 10 boxes and am testing instantiation on my Dell XPS 13 laptop running Win64 Home. I exercise good computer hygiene and none of my day-to-day user accounts have admin access.

I've installed PIA on this box.  I created a shortcut to PIA-Manager.exe with the "run as administrator" selection toggled on and placed it in the global startup folder. I've got PIA setup to "auto-connect at login".

Rebooting the machine runs all the other shortcuts in the startup folder but not PIA-Manager. Clicking on the PIA_Manager shortcut in the folder results in a dialog box wanting an admin password.

Eventually, I will be putting PIA on my wife's Win 10 box, and she is completely non-technical.  There is no way in the world I could expect her to run PIA-Manager and enter an admin password in the event she has to reboot. So the first time she reboots, she is no longer protected. I've managed to teach her, that if things aren't working properly, to reboot the computer.

Would someone please provide some assistance on how to start PIA-Manager in this configuration?

thanks

Chris

Buzzed_Lightyear

@cdubea

It's always been my personal experience that PIA always boots last. I was once able to finish an entire game of Microsoft Solitaire before the PIA manager finally booted. Try waiting as long as 10 minutes before clicking on the desktop shortcut and see if PIA isn't just taking a long time to boot. Because I bet you it does (eventually) boot, however, it just takes a long time.

For me, part of the problem is my anti-virus suite. It has an option of "Early-Boot", in which it prevents anything else from booting before the anti-virus software itself boots. So it pushes all the other programs back to make sure that it boots first. Other than that, I do not know how to make a program priority boot. Considering how my anti-virus can do it, I'm assuming there's a trick to getting PIA to boot first. However, I do not know what this trick would be. Maybe tech support can help you?

Harry2

cdubea said:

Fairly new PIA user here.  

I've got a house full of Win 10 boxes and am testing instantiation on my Dell XPS 13 laptop running Win64 Home. I exercise good computer hygiene and none of my day-to-day user accounts have admin access.

I've installed PIA on this box.  I created a shortcut to PIA-Manager.exe with the "run as administrator" selection toggled on and placed it in the global startup folder. I've got PIA setup to "auto-connect at login".

Rebooting the machine runs all the other shortcuts in the startup folder but not PIA-Manager. Clicking on the PIA_Manager shortcut in the folder results in a dialog box wanting an admin password.

Eventually, I will be putting PIA on my wife's Win 10 box, and she is completely non-technical.  There is no way in the world I could expect her to run PIA-Manager and enter an admin password in the event she has to reboot. So the first time she reboots, she is no longer protected. I've managed to teach her, that if things aren't working properly, to reboot the computer.

Would someone please provide some assistance on how to start PIA-Manager in this configuration?

thanks

Chris

You are installing "run as administrator"?

jamessusan104

There are sure new "elements" of Windows 10 that can't be obstructed by any OS-level changes, including the hosts record. The updates recorded above interface with vortex-win.data. microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com.pay someone to do my homework These locations are hard-coded to sidestep the hosts record and can't be kept from associating.

cdubea

Harry2 said:

You are installing "run as administrator"?

Yes.

Unfortunately the situation has gotten worse.

Trying some workarounds using task scheduler and runas proved ineffectual. In doing some spelunking around the innerwebs, I saw the declaration that this issue had been resolved with the new instance of PIA-manager.

So I uninstalled the old version and installed the latest version from an admin account. I created a shortcut as before and told it to run as administrator, etc and now it tells me I have to expressly "run it as an administrator". That's even a bigger hurdle than before.

If I can't resolve this I won't be renewing PIA in the future as it's ineffectual to protect the computers in my home. Will someone from PIA weigh in here?

How do I get PIA to run at startup on a machine with a user account that is not an administrator?

Seriously.

Chris

cdubea

Wow, just wow, I just got this message from tech support:

"Unfortunately we do not anticipate the VPN to work correctly on a machine without admin permissions. Even if it does run, it may not be functioning at fully capacity. What we would recommend in this instance is to either upgrade the user profile that would be using the VPN to admin status"

Seriously? A service for (allegedly) "safe browsing" telling me that my user accounts have to have admin privileges to enable PIA to function properly?

I'm shaking my head at disbelief on this BS.

cdubea

I got it to work, no thanks to PIA tech support.

Here is the magic: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/193743-elevated-program-shortcut-create-standard-user.html

The key is activating and using the built in administrator credentials. No other account credentials, even one with admin privileges, will work.

MarcKropp3

This registry change fixed the issue of the PIA manager not starting when I turned the computer on for me.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/18237/fixed-windows-10-automatic-startup-issue/p1
I also have the nuisance of getting a UAC permission message to click Yes to when logged on as admin and having to enter the admin password when logged on as a standard user every time I start the computer.

RandySea

cdubea said:

I got it to work, no thanks to PIA tech support.

Here is the magic: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/193743-elevated-program-shortcut-create-standard-user.html

The key is activating and using the built in administrator credentials. No other account credentials, even one with admin privileges, will work.

I came up with a similar solution several years ago using Windows 7.   I didn't want the the built-in Administrator account activated at all, but it really is the only way I could find that worked. Ok, another way to get autostart of VPN while logged in as a regular user is to use a different product than PIA. But that isn't the question here.

For more info on issues with the built in account, look at https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/161608-how-hide-built-administrator-account-after-activating.html

hagyman85

This is actually weird problem. I'm using both Windows 8.1 and 10 but it appears only on 10. I tried to use those tips but nothing really helped write my assignment for me
i believe the root of the problem is far deeper here. any tip can help. Thanks

marbury818

Try to reinstall the program. Worked out for me. writing a college term paper

alexsmith84

Yeah reinstall should work just fine, fam.
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floraphilips

Thanks for the answer! It was really helpful for me to solve this problem! A technical forum like this is very much important as it helps in accessing to the problems that cannot be found on the internet very easily. 

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TeeDee

Is this still the case? No help form PIA for non-admin accounts?  No elevated run as a service like other apps do?

Having same issue, PIA appears to install and run fine on a non-admin account with admin credentials entered. 

However after restart, the app does not run even if I save the app to run in compatibility mode "Run As Administrator".  Also it doesn't create a Start Menu folder in non-admin accounts.

I did three total install/restarts the last one a full un/re-install.

I waited for PIA to start on it's own ("Start application at login" checked) for over 20 min.

I can browse to the file and run it with the admin password, but I want it to start itself in a non-admin account AND work.  I'm not really down with the RunasSPC workaround.

I'm finding it hard to believe that they're sticking by the "must be an admin account" when conventional wisdom these days is to spend the majority of your time in non-admin accounts for safety.

I can deal with a shortcut to launch the app with admin credentials for myself on my primary (non-admin) account.

However I'm trying to make a turnkey, safe as possible, laptop for a person to use in mostly public Wi-Fi situations.  I'm thinking PIA is not gonna fit the bill, which is unfortunate as I'm overall happy with their product.

rojaaip

I followed everybody's advice, too bad this [email protected] cannot even handle this simple task of starting up. I had trusted it to start auto when there was a *(&^#$ option for that (Win7) .

Then I downloaded that german software - no change - then I even added administrator - what kind of stupid software (not runassspc, but pia) insists on this name anyway - still no autostart - put it in StartUp folder - software cannot even handle 'sign in as admin' and just dies. I now use this slick s/w (runasspc) as my shortcut to the VPN.

Their claims to have this autorun thing fixed in .77 is plain BS. Just some bells & whistles and nothing fixed. Then I followed the steps here, from a more reliable VPN service: https://support.purevpn.com/windows7-firewall

 Way to provide support, PIA !