Unable to run MATLAB via second user

I have recently recieved access to Matlab through my University, and specifically for my studies I have created a seperate user on my laptop where I keep relevant files and programs located, that includes Matlab.

However, when I tried to run the program through my second user (not the adminstrator) it kept popping up the activation client instead of the main one, despite me already having my account activated. After a few failed attempts, I tried to run it as adminstrator, and it worked. But I still do not feel like I'm getting as much as possible out of it. I'm assuming that the program identifies that it's owned by the adminstrator user hence the errors that sometimes pop when I try to save or open files from the second user.

Is it prohibited to run the program from several users due to security reasons or is there something that can be performed in order to make it work both ways?

Thanks!

[Faisal M]

Im currently having the same issue, anyone knows how to fix this?

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

It will depend on your license type. If you have an individual license, it is tied to a specific user. See step 5 in the install instructions here.

I also found some of the information provided in this answer helpful.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

I'm assuming that the program identifies that it's owned by the adminstrator user hence the errors that sometimes pop when I try to save or open files from the second user.

No, you are observing a common difficulty on Windows, especially if User Account Control (UAC) is turned on.

MS Windows prevents non-administrators from writing underneath the two Program Files main directories, in an attempt to block malware from being able to infect other programs.

This presents a difficulty for the activation client, which wants to be able to write the license underneath the main MATLAB directory in Program Files or Program Files (x86) . So you end up having to Run As Administrators to do the registration. But the username registered is according to whatever username you tell the activation process to use.

Once you are running, you can have errors writing to files in a couple of cases:

• you are trying to save underneath the MATLAB installation directory. The MATLAB installation directory is the default directory that comes up when you first run MATLAB after you install it, and people often do not realize that they should cd to a different directory to do their work in, and then run into problems when they try to save files; Or
• you have security restrictions on the locations you are trying to save to. That happens more often with network drives, but can also crop up when trying to write to different drives (depending how the directories were created), or can crop up when archives such as zip files are restored from other systems (as some kinds of archives record and restore ownership information.)