Eclipse Update Failing with Message "Insufficient access privileges to apply this update"

Question

I'm running Eclipse under a Windows 7, 64-bit installation on which I have administrator privileges.

Since I first installed Eclipse many months ago, I've been able to keep it up to date with the Help > Check for Updates function—but starting a couple of weeks ago, it gave the message

Insufficient access privileges to apply this update.

Even when I ran Eclipse as an administrator, I continued to get this message. How can I fix it?

Answer 1

For anyone using Linux: I had this problem in Ubuntu because I had installed Eclipse in /opt, which was owned by root.

To get the updates, simply run Eclipse as root and then select the Help -> Check for Updates again. In general running applications as root is not a good idea, but if it's just to do an update... well that's what the root account is for :)

cd /opt/eclipse
sudo ./eclipse

Answer 2

Another (simpler?) approach which worked for me is to simply give the group "Users" write permission on C:\Program Files (x86)\eclipse.

Now, this is a security consideration, but you're NOT granting access to the whole of C:\Program Files (x86), just the eclipse installation.

Answer 3

I found a workaround for this stupid bug in Eclipse. Selecting updates one-by-one is disabled, but if you click Select all and then deselect the ones you do not need, you can proceed.

Answer 4

In Windows another option is to set the "Run as administrator" property on the Eclipse shortcut that you're using to start Eclipse. Right click on the shortcut and choose "Properties" from the dropdown menu. Click on the "Shortcut" tab in the Properties dialog and then click on the "Advanced..." button. In the Advanced Properties dialog set the "Run as administrator" option.