Can't run Cryptomator as admin on Windows 10 [Error inside]

[CranberryPie]

As the title says, I can’t run cryptomator as admin on Windows 10 Pro, trying to create a hard link here.

[infeo]

Hi and welcome to the community!

@CranberryPie

I can’t run cryptomator as admin on Windows 10 Pro, trying to create a hard link here.

You describe two things here, which of them is not working?

[CranberryPie]

Hi and thank you.

I was led to believe I need to run Cryptomator as admin in order to create a Directory Junction (hard/symbolic link) from my vault to a location. I keep getting “The system cannot find the path specified.”

[infeo]

For accessing you vault with admin privileges, see here:

Cryptomator on Windows: Accessing your vault with admin priviliges

Hey Community, UPDATE: The most recent solution can be found in our docs: Volume Type — Cryptomator 1.7.0 documentation when using WinFSP/FUSE or Dokany on Windows, you might have the following The Problem: Processes (aka programs) do not have access to an unlocked vault, even when Cryptomator is started with admin privileges. The Reason: You mounted the vault to a drive letter. To make the virtual drive visible to all users (including elevated), you would need either admin privileges o…

But this won’t help you here, since currently symlinks inside of a vault are not supported with Windows & Dokany. For this feature exists an issue on our issue tracker:

Cryptomator Symbolic link issues?

[CranberryPie]

Even accessing my vault with the administrator account while running Cryptomator as admin still gives me the error. I never had to use custom flags.

Before I moved computers I had a mklink Junction point created with my vault. Like you said symlinks aren’t supported from within the vault, I tried to make one to the vault from outside and it says: Local volumes are required to complete the operation.

Command: mklink /J “C:\Users\Cranberry\files” “G:”

[infeo]

Which volume provider do you use? You can find the name of the provider in the general settings.

My above comments are valid if you use Dokany. With WebDAV the fault is most probably not Cryptomator, since your vault is then handled as any another network drive.

[CranberryPie]

I’m using Dokany.

On version 1.4.15 I was able to create a symbolic link between 2 folders and start the program as an admin. Does running it as admin not work as well?

EDIT:

I was able to create a Symbolic link within the vault using mklink /D “folder A” “folder B”

So Junction directories are broken? But symbolic links work perfectly fine.

[infeo]

@CranberryPie

On version 1.4.15 I was able to create a symbolic link between 2 folders and start the program as an admin. Does running it as admin not work as well?

You still describe two different problems…

Regarding the symlinks:

To provide an unencrypted view on your files Cryptomator has two layers:

1. A filesystem layer creating the clear text directory structure and files.
2. A serving layer integrating this filesystem into your os

For the first cryptofs is used. It supports symbolic links.
The second is os specific, for Windows you can either use WebDAV or Dokany. But both do not support this feature. In contrast, if you use macOS or a system running a linux kernel this is possible.

What you can do is to create a symbolic link file outside a vault and let it point into the vault. If you try to create a symblic link inside a vault your shell returns The device does not support symbolic links.

An alternative to a symoblic link on Windows is using a shortcut.

Regarding running as admin:

I can run Cryptomator as admin. Is Cryptomator already running? Pease note that only one instance of Cryptomator is allowed, see this feature request: Option to start two instances of Cryptomator with different privileges (Windows) · Issue #1042 · cryptomator/cryptomator · GitHub