Solved Edge gets "Couldn't download - No permissions" on every download

Working on a friends Samsung laptop. It's a nice PC, 11th gen i7. 16GB ram, SAMSUNG MZ9LQ1T0HBLB-00B 1TB M.2.

Every time we try to download a file we get Couldn't download - No permissions. I've looked at all the suggestions I could find via google searches including turning off UAC but so far nothing makes any difference. Even failed when I tried to download Disable_Show_More_Options.reg
from this site. Doesn't matter where he tries to download to, get the same error each time. He has full Control access to Downloads and Desktop, both of which fail.

He does use a VPN called Hide Away but I turned that off and still have the same problem. AV is Windows Security, nothing else. I'm going to disable Hide Away from auto starting and reboot and see if that makes a difference but I doubt it will.

I use one of my Notebooks and log into the same site at the client's location, see if I get the same error or a successful task.

You shouldn’t need to make any of the changes you mentioned, for something that is ordinarilly a standard process. The more you change the worst it could make it.

The VPN, is it an installed feature or web based with no client side software? If something was unstalled client side, is there a possibility this VPN software made detrimental changes to the laptop.

Have you tried a different browser? Maybe Firefox since it's not chrome based.

I uninstalled the VPN using Geek uninstaller, still the same problem. I'll try a different browser but even if that works it doesn't solve the problem. He should be able to use Edge.

Installed Chrome, same problem. Get Needs permission to download.

I'll try DISM and SFC, see if that makes any difference.

It's either windows corruption or account corruption. You can easily prove which one by creating another user account (make it an administrator)
Restart and login to the new account. If he can download as he should, his old user account is corrupted.
If the problem exists in the newly created account, it's windows. Do a repair install.

I think you must check your UAC settings.

Also check the downloads folder that the user has full control. Lastly do an Edge reset.

Alan Smithee said:

I think you must check your UAC settings.

Click to expand...

Alan, as I said before, I turned off UAC and it did not make any difference.

Fabler2 said:

Also check the downloads folder that the user has full control. Lastly do an Edge reset.

Click to expand...

User has full control of all his folders. Just checked again to be sure.

glasskuter said:

It's either windows corruption or account corruption. You can easily prove which one by creating another user account (make it an administrator)
Restart and login to the new account. If he can download as he should, his old user account is corrupted.
If the problem exists in the newly created account, it's windows. Do a repair install.

Click to expand...

Good idea, I'll try a new account.

Success: Edge works fine under Administrator (I just activated it and logged in with it) so there is a problem with the owners account. It's a Microsoft account so I need to repair it, not replace it. Any suggestions on how to do this?

I'm going to delete and re-create the account. That should fix this. I'll also try creating a new admin Microsoft account first to make sure works, not just test the built in Administrator account.

If you want disable UAC controls completely you must also:

1) Change to 0 the registry value of "EnableLUA" in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System;

2) Open Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), expand Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> User Account Control, set to "Disabled" the policy "Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" and restart the pc.

If It works with this above settings, then it was a UAC problem

Alan Smithee said:

If you want disable UAC controls completely you must also:

1) Change to 0 the registry value of "EnableLUA" in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System;

2) Open Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), expand Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> User Account Control, set to "Disabled" the policy "Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" and restart the pc.

If It works with this above settings, then it was a UAC problem

Click to expand...

If it is a UAC problem, how do you fix it? (I'll make the changes you mention as another test).

The issue Is fixed after you changed these settings?

If its managed by your organization, you've to delete the registry keys to regain control over your browser.

Ztruker said:

Working on a friends Samsung laptop. It's a nice PC, 11th gen i7. 16GB ram, SAMSUNG MZ9LQ1T0HBLB-00B 1TB M.2.

Every time we try to download a file we get Couldn't download - No permissions. I've looked at all the suggestions I could find via google searches including turning off UAC but so far nothing makes any difference. Even failed when I tried to download Disable_Show_More_Options.reg
from this site. Doesn't matter where he tries to download to, get the same error each time. He has full Control access to Downloads and Desktop, both of which fail.

He does use a VPN called Hide Away but I turned that off and still have the same problem. AV is Windows Security, nothing else. I'm going to disable Hide Away from auto starting and reboot and see if that makes a difference but I doubt it will.

Click to expand...

Try resetting the permissions on the downloads folder


I would also scan with malwarebytes as well.

Ztruker said:

I'm going to delete and re-create the account. That should fix this.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily.
Here's the proper way to both test for user account corruption and, if corruption is found, transition user data into a new account correctly so as to avoid any permission problems.

1. create an entirely new local user account with administrative privileges. Restart and login to the new account. If the problem exists in this account, your problem is in Windows, not in the user account so direct your troubleshooting in that direction.
If it tests good, log back in to old account and backup the user data by creating folders on an external drive and COPYING files into these folders. Restart again.

2. Log back into new account. Delete the old account and restart.

3. Log into new account again. Use step A or B depending on what the user wants.

A. Do this step if the user wants to use a MS account and sync to Onedrive. Change this account to a MS account and set up Onedrive sync. Any files he previously had in Onedrive should be brought into the new account automatically. If they do not, COPY the files you backed up previously into the new account user folders. Do not copy the folders you created, only the files, into the respective user folders.

B. If the user wants to keep using the new local account without using Onedrive, just copy the files from external media into the new account user folders. Any files previously held in Onedrive will remain there until manually deleted using Onedrive on the web.

Alan Smithee said:

User Account Control, set to "Disabled" the policy "Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" and restart the pc.

Click to expand...

IMO as a troubleshooting step this could be a catch-22. While I agree doing this could point to a UAC issue, one would not know if it's a UAC issue with just the corrupt user account, or a UAC problem in general so troubleshooting could be led in an entirely wrong direction..

@glasskuter, that's basically what I had done and proved the problem was a corrupted user account, so yesterday backed up his data, deleted his account, re-created it, made it an Administrator account, restored his data and all is well.

Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions. Kept me focused on fixing this and the owner is very happy.

I marked this thread as solved but couldn't find a way to indicate which post was the solution. Any way to do that?