In Enterprise working environment, you are most probably not granted administrator previleges, however to boost your productivty, you might need install some software toolkits that you are most familiar with. This blog covers the most widely used toolkits and how to install them without admin rights.
- Install
nodejs
without admin - Install
yarn
without admin - Install
Choco
without admin - Install
Powershell portable
- Install
Dotnet SDK or runtime
without admin - Install
Everything Search
without admin
Install nodejs without admin
- Go to https://nodejs.org/en/download/
- Download Windows Binary (.zip)
-
Unzip and extract to a folder
C:\your\nodejs_path\here\ node -v npm -v
Add the extracted path to Windows Path, run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\your\nodejs_path\here\
Install yarn without admin
Run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
npm config set strict-ssl false #important
npm install yarn -g
Install Choco without admin
Follow this link to setup Choco without admin rights.
If you even do not have the rights to run Powershell, follow below procedures:
- Get a PC where you have the admin previlege
- Install Choco
- Find the installation folder where Choco is installed, usually this is
C:\ProgramData\chocolatey
- Zip all files in this folder, and share the zip files with whatever approaches: email, dropbox, AWS S3, FTP, USB sticks etc.
- Unzip the file and add the path to the environement variable path
Install Powershell, Cmder portable
Once choco is install, we can install many software toolkits which are portable and could be installed without admin, refer to this site to get the list of portable software.
For instance, to install powershell (Portable), run the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:
choco install powershell.portable
# Below will install 7zip, Cmder and git in one go!
choco install battecode.cmder.dev
Install Dotnet SDK or runtime without admin
- Go to Microsoft Dotnet download link, e.g. Dotnet 5 Dowload Page
- Download the binary file(not msi installer)
- Unzip the file and update the folder path in the Windows Environement
set DOTNET_ROOT=%USERPROFILE%\dotnet
set PATH=%USERPROFILE%\dotnet;%PATH%
set DOTNET_MULTILEVEL_LOOKUP=0
An alternative approach:
-
Download the stable version of the scripts
Bash (Linux/macOS): https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh
PowerShell (Windows): https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.ps1 Run the below script to install the .NET SDK and the shared runtime.
.\dotnet-install.ps1
Install Everything Search without admin
- Download the zip file here, note to download the portable version
- Unzip and run 'Everything.exe'
- Since we don't have the admin rights, we cannot run this as service, so the alternative approach is to index folders. This way, add the root of all your drive to be searched, and you will get the same effects as indexing all local dirves!
Install Anything Else without admin
- Go to a PC where you have admin
- Find the path where executable file is located
- Zip the file and copy the zip file to the computer where no admin rights are grante
- Unzip the files to the target computer
- It should run in most cases. Something I tried out:
- Fast Stone Capture
- Paint.net
- VLC
- Sidekick browser
- Notion
- Slack
- Evernote
- GitKraken
- Notepad ++
- Sublime
- vscode
See also:
Top comments (2)
Thank you so much! I didn't realize you could just drag the .NET runtime binaries into a folder and it'll recognize the host. Saved me a lot of hassle :)
Sorry but could you elaborate on what you meant by this?