Although in some cases the game may require you have administrator rights to install (it depends a bit on which version you are installing and what copy protection system was employed), normally you should be able to run the game through a normal non-administrator account.

Some people, however, may run into the above error, where it comes up with an error telling you that it needs administrator privileges to run the game even if the current user is set up to have the full administrator rights.

There may be various reasons for this, but it mainly means that something is not quite correct on your system. The following are suggested workarounds and fixes listed in order of simplicity.

1. Try to use "Run As..."

The following may work:

• Open Windows Explorer ("Start" menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer)
• Browse to the installation folder (Go to "My Computer", then "C:", and "Program Files" -> "Sports Interactive" and "Football Manager 2006"
• Hold the Shift key down and right click "fm.exe".
• Choose "Run as..." from the menu that pops up.
• In the dialog select "Run as the following user"
• In "Username" choose your user.
• Type in your password.
• Click Ok to try to run the game.

Alternatively try the above with a different existing user than your own, for example the Administrator user if you have access to this account.

2. Run the game as a different user with administrator privileges

The quickest and easiest workaround would try to run the game as a different user that has full administrator rights. If you have tried an existing administrator user and it didn't work, try creating a new one (remember to give the user full rights), and try again. You shouldn't need to re-install the game - just run the existing installation.

3. Folder and File Security Settings

The game needs certain data to run properly, both for reading and and writing. If the system is incorrectly set up then it may not be able to access these files and it may therefore not work properly.

You need to check that the files and folders where the game is installed is set up correctly - to make any changes to try to fix this you will need to be an administrator, so if you're not then please log in as a user that has the full administrator privileges.

If you are running Windows XP Home Edition you may need to boot into Safe Mode to make these changes:

• Restart your computer.
• After the first boot screen ("post" screen), press F8. Press it a couple of times to make sure it registers, and press it quickly after the first screen changes.
• You should get a menu from where you should be able to choose "Safe Mode". Select it and press Return/Enter.
• Let the computer boot into Safe Mode.
• Open Windows Explorer ("Start" menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer). Find the installation folder (Go to "My Computer", choose "C:", then "Program Files" and "Sports Interactive" and finally "Football Manager 2006").
• Right click the "Football Manager 2006" folder and choose "Properties".

In the "Properties" dialog for the FM06 folder:

• Choose the "Security" tab. If a message appear when doing so, click "OK" to go past it. Please note that the "Security" tab does not show on Windows XP Home Edition unless you are in Safe Mode.
• Click the "Advanced" button.
• Go to the "Owner" tab.
• In "Change owner to" select your username.
• Click "OK".
• Answer "Yes" to the question: "You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?"
• Back in the "Security" tab there is a list of users and user groups.
• Select "Users" from this list.
• In "Permissions for users" turn on: "Read & Execute", "Read", "Write" and "Modify".
• Click "OK" to close the dialog.
• If you're using Windows XP Home Edition, you need to reboot.
• Try to run the game.
• If this doesn't work, you might need to do the same steps above on the "Sports Interactive" folder itself (inside C:\Program Files\).

The same issue with file access rights also applies to your own temporary folder, to which the game will write temporary files. On Windows 2000, XP and above, this folder is normally located in C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Local Settings\Temp\. On Windows 98 and ME it is usually C:\Windows\Temp\, but it may also be C:\Temp\. Follow the steps above to make sure you have the correct security settings to access your own temporary folder (normally you would have already).

4. Check the file attributes of the Safedisc driver

It's also possible that the Safedisc driver has the wrong file attributes set, which may cause the game to fail to launch with the same error. Try the following:

• Open Windows Explorer ("Start" menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer)
• Go to "My Computer", then "C:", and "Windows" then "System32" and finally the "drivers" folder (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\).
• Find the file named "secdrv.sys".
• Right click and choose "Properties".
• In "Attributes" make sure the file is not "Hidden". If it is, turn it off.
• Click "OK".
• Try to run the game.

5. Re-install the game

You can try to do a full clean re-install of the game to see if it helps.

• Uninstall the game ("Start" menu -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Uninstall Football Manager 2006).
• Make sure all files are removed by opening Windows Explorer (Start menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer) and go to the C:\Program Files\Sports Interactive\ folder. If there is no such folder, you're sorted, if there is, delete the "Football Manager 2006" folder inside it if such a folder exists.
• Make sure you clear old settings. Please refer to "HOWTO: Reset the game settings" and follow the instructions for manually resetting them.
• Now re-install the game and try to run it.

6. Log the actions of FM and see if there are any errors

If all else fails, you can try two freeware utilities from SysInternals: FileMon and RegMon

• You need to download these, then uncompress them into any folder.
• Once this is done, double-click regfilemon.exe and then double-click filemon.exe in the folder you uncompressed the files to. Both programs should now be running.
• For both programs, first go to the "File" menu in each and check that "Capture events" is turned on. If it is not, turn it on.
• Keep the programs running in the background.
• Try to run the game.
• When the administrator error comes up, click to close the dialog.
• Go back to the FileMon and RegMon programs.
• Turn off "Capture Events" in both (from the File menu).
• In each program go to "File" and choose "Save As".
• Save the two logs to two different filenames somewhere easy to locate (the desktop, for example) as text files.
• Open the two files in a text editor (you should be able to just double click them to open them in Notepad).
• Look through both logs and look for error messages, such as "ACCESS DENIED".
• If you don't know what the error message mean or how to fix them, post any error messages you find to the PC Support Forum in new thread and we will try to help you.

• Error: You are receiving the Error ‘Product Key already Active’ message
• TROUBLESHOOT: Out of memory errors
• ERROR: Cannot run game:Failed to set up graphics system
• You are receiving the Error [-10]
• INFO: FM2007 Folder Locations

• You are receiving the Error [-10]
• Phone activation fails - Drops out after 3rd key issue
• ERROR: Cannot run game:Failed to set up graphics system
• You are receiving the error: ‘This application has failed to start because saAuditMD.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem’
• You are receiving the error: ‘FM2009 could not run as ‘facegen’ was unable to initialize!’