Documentation Miscellaneous Using Without Admin Rights

## Using VeraCrypt Without Administrator Privileges

In Windows, a user who does not have administrator privileges can 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.
After a system administrator installs VeraCrypt on the system, users without administrator privileges will be able to run VeraCrypt, mount/unmount 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.

Warning: No matter what kind of software you use, as regards personal privacy in most cases, it is not 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.