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I'm developing a C# WinForms app with VS2010 and its target audience are kids ages 8-14. I estimate about 30% of my users will not have administrative access on their computers, and therefore will not be able to install my app without having their parents install it for them.

Is there any way I can have the .NET Framework install without requiring administrative rights, or somehow bundle the required .NET components with my app? I'm currently developing for .NET Framework 4, but I could easily change my code up to have it work with .NET 2 or 3.5, if needed.

Andy Haden
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  • .NET 3.5 is included in Win 7 so that might increase the number you can reach. – m4tt1mus Dec 31 '10 at 00:53
  • I think a more succinct question is how do you install a .Net framework developer pack for dotnet cli without admin. The downloadable msi for the developer packs requires admin. – The Sharp Ninja Feb 15 '23 at 15:34

6 Answers6

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Necromancing, since it's 2018 now.
Yes you can. .NET-Core allows you to do so-called self-contained deployment.

Windows-x86-32:

dotnet restore -r win-x86
dotnet build -r win-x86
dotnet publish -f netcoreapp2.0 -c Release -r win-x86

Windows-x86-64:

dotnet restore -r win-x64
dotnet build -r win-x64
dotnet publish -f netcoreapp2.0 -c Release -r win-x64

For more information: Understanding .Net Core and Mono and .NET Core vs Mono

However, WinForms and WPF will come with .NET Core 3.0 in 2019. (it's now RTM)
Prior to .NET Core 3.0, if you used WPF, you were out of luck.
But if you used WinForms, you could use mono's WinForms implementation compiled for NetStandard 2.0+.

However, that means you have to limit yourselfs to the parts of WinForms that mono implements (for the time being).

There's also the Avalonia framework, if you want to do cross-platform development.

Or you can just do everything in the browser, and start a server+WebBrowser on the client - that should work everywhere, particularly if you include Chrome/Chromium for windows-users to avoid browser-problems (MS InternetExploder).

Stefan Steiger
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  • The question is about .NET Framework, **not** .NET Core. Don't see the point in answering 8 years late with how to install another technology. – Camilo Terevinto Dec 16 '20 at 11:26
  • @Camilo Terevinto: Well, with .NET 5, there is no more difference between .NET Framework and .NET Core. Or rather, there is no more anything but .NET Core. – Stefan Steiger Dec 16 '20 at 13:33
  • Well, .NET Framework 4.8 will be supported probably for the next 10+ years, so I wouldn't say there's nothing but .NET Core. There are plenty of things that .NET Core can't do and will probably never be able to do (WCF, WebForms, etc) – Camilo Terevinto Dec 16 '20 at 13:44
  • @Camilo Terevinto: Sure, but WCF and WebForms are now officially dead. And those 10 years will pass, and then ? New hardware will require new OS, and old stuff won't run on new software. Just a question of time. The point of answering the question was, that if you upgrade to the new framework, you now have a way out of the box. Besides, .NET Core was brand new when I wrote this. Besides that,I don't like the word "probably" - and what if they decided,wasting their time and future opportunities is not worth it ? Would they even admit it ? Who cares about your company, as long as MS will be fine – Stefan Steiger Dec 17 '20 at 11:19
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It is entirely possible, though not necessarily practical, to install an application including the .net framework without the end user having admin privileges. The general category for what you want to do is called Application Virtualization. We use VMWare ThinApp, an application virtualization technology similar to Spoon mentioned in an earlier post in this thread. Other applications in the category include Cameyo (www.cameyo.com) and InstallAware (www.installaware.com/virtualization/).

You can also do a web search for "Application Virtualization" and find other results. You will want to ignore Microsoft App-V and Citrix XenApp because these solutions are targeted at enterprises wanting to virtualize applications for internal deployment inside a corporate network.

David Mc
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There is no way to run .NET applications without installing .NET on your machine first and yes, the installation does require admin rights. Allowing that for regular users would undermine the whole point of having access restrictions in the first place.

Adrian Grigore
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This is an old question but it seems that Microsoft is planning a .NET Native feature that will at some point allow you compile self-contained C# apps that do not depend on the .NET Framework being installed, so that would theoretically end the huge headache involved in trying to distribute .NET applications targeted at newer versions of the Framework to users that do not have admin rights.

ivanatpr
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You can try using a zero-installer, like the one from http://spoon.net, which can create single file distributions of .NET apps with the option to include a specific .NET Framework in the zero installer. You can host these on spoon to be streamed to the client computer or opt for deploying the single file exe's yourself using Spoon Studio (http://spoon.net/Studio/)

Bob de Wit
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We aren't allowed to install software on our workstations either, but we are able to use the SDK binaries (not the installers, as they require admin rights) and dev in dotNet Core on our workstations and do all of this with no admin perms.

Simply download the binaries from the dotNet Core download page and select the 'binary installer'. Then extract the SDK whereever you like.

Next, add the path as a new User Path Variable. From the Start Menu, type 'environment' and pick Edit environmental Variables for your account. Then add a new variable titled MSBuildSDKSsPath with a value of the place you extracted the binaries.

For me, I extracted the binaries to C:\dev\dotnetCore so I set the value as C:\dev\dotnetCore. A quick restart of Visual Studio later and .Net Core 2.1 and up now appears within my available targer frameworks.

FoxDeploy
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