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Comment by Pewpewarrows | Hacker News Reader

Didn't the Google team also make Chrome now usable/installable without Admin rights?

Yes, by default in Windows it installs to the user's "Application Data" folder instead of the system-wide "Program Files".

That was Chrome Frame, the Internet Explorer plugin that enables chrome rendering in IE.

Chrome itself can be installed without admin rights, I remember using that on a University pc to view a flash video with the embedded plugin.

We deal with a large enterprise that uses old versions of IE and whenever our support team encounters one we just upgrade them to Chrome. Sadly we can't recommend any other browser since they all require admin access for some reason.

You can get Firefox and Opera in portable versions that don't require admin rights.

This works if USB devices haven't been locked down by some kind of IT policy.

While portable apps are promoted for and usually installed on USB drives, they can also be installed on local disks as well, and they don't require admin privileges to do so (from my experience).

I was not aware of that. Thanks! I guess the portable aspect is not quite perfect for their description though?

Don't make things so complicated!

If you want to install Firefox, get the normal Firefox download, and install it on your desktop (i.e. choose a path which you have write access to)

You only need Admin rights to install system wide or overwrite system binaries.

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