Winareo Tweaker fails to launch

Jkarasik said:

After updating to Version 25H2 (OS Build 26200.9168), my Winaero Tweaker 1.65 failed to launch. I tried numerous fixes: Run as Admin, Reinstall, Confirmed that it was not a Defender issue. Turns out the latest builds made a fundamental change to restrict access and thus requires the app to run with TrustedInstaller privileges.

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Microsoft makes changes to Windows to fix security issues. One possible reason for the error is that on your particular system with your account there is an issue. WinAero has had problems like this quite recently. Check the WinAero website to see if anyone else has this problem.

Jkarasik said:

You need to run specific actions in Winaero Tweaker as TrustedInstaller "because Windows heavily restricts access to certain core system files, services, and registry hives to protect the operating system from unauthorized changes. [1, 2]."

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This is unlikely to be the problem. If you create a program that runs with admin rights, and you understand how to use backup and restore privileges, then you can easily write to registry keys (or files and directories) that are owned by TrustedInstaller. (if you didn't understand you could emulate the method for doing this with regedit by taking ownership and changing the permissions.) TrustedInstaller annoys some people because it can make a few things a little bit harder. Quite often you can work around this completely by not using admin rights, and making user level changes.

Jkarasik said:

After a lot of research, I resolved the issue by using PowerRun (PowerRun v1.9 (Run with highest privileges)). This app allows me to create a new dekstop shortcut to launch run Winaero Tweaker 1.65 as TrustedInstaller perfectly.

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I've no idea why you can launch WinAero tweaker as TrustedInstaller, but you shouldn't do this. WinAero Tweaker makes some changes to User level items, so you need to run it with your own account, and makes other changes that require admin rights, so your account needs to be an administrator. Most home users have a single account like that.

One useful check that you could make is to create a second (local) account with admin rights, and see if that can run WinAero tweaker.

Finally, the WinAero website tells you how to perform some of the tweaks directly, so if you really need to undo something, you might be able to find out how to do it.