I've had the same problem with my stuff, I managed to get around it by getting the person with the admin password to leave the desktop up, installing it then copying the files onto my USB, it's worked so far but only on the non-admin user for that comp.  You could also try setting up an OS on your usb and then installing the Aurora files to that, I have linux on mine so i haven't been able to install but if you can find and copy a windows os lite and switch it onto your usb it might work.

with administer privileges

it's right in the first post.

you still need to install it on every pc you want to use aurora due to components installed in the system folder.

are you quite certain about that?   I have not had the ability to install stuff on my last two work m/c but have been able to fire up Aurora from a thumbdrive with no problems.  Of course the m/c I use are still running XP (the people I work for take a LONG time to change!)

Sure, on your home computer.  Can't you specify the instal path to the jump drive, instead of installing it to your computer?  Then just run from jump?

Sorry if these seems a bit noobish, but can't you download the installer and put that on a thumb drive, and then just take the whole installer over?  Similar to making a .iso of a CD and moving that virtual CD to instal elsewhere?

The installer drops a bunch of dll and ocx files into your %systemroot%\system32 directory, so it's not very portable unless you can identify and move all the requisite system files into the root directory where the executable lives and add that to your system path on the target machine:

e. g.

set path=%path%;C:\games\Aurora\
cd C:\games\Aurora
Aurora.exe

That would instruct your machine to include the game's directory in the list of places it looks for the system files; however, if you don't have admin rights on the machine I'm guessing this approach is out of the question too.

I don't actually know if the path business is necessary, though: would a vb6 app properly pick up those files if they were present in the executable directory *without* adding the directory to the path? I know you can get away with sneaky tricks like that in certain . NET scenarios. . .  It'd honestly be really nice to avoid having to drop all those outdated system files into my System32 folder.  I might have to give this a try.

The biggest hurdle would be ensuring one grabbed every single system file needed by Aurora; that might take some trial and error.

A long time ago I heard of a couple of people who installed the program onto their usb drive.  They had to do it on the computer they were going to use at the office so this may not work for you.  This was back in the days of Starfire Assistant.  It should still work as the basic setup is the same but we are talking 5-7 years and computer design/software has changed so it may not work any more.

Brian