CEF does not load on Windows if the viewer is Run as administrator

[Dan-Linden]

Environment

Second Life Release 7.2.2.17774206511 (64bit)
Windows

Full Environment

Second Life Release 7.2.2.17774206511 (64bit)
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5930K CPU @ 3.50GHz (3491.92 MHz)
Memory: 32610 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.6332)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 32.0.15.6590
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 565.90

Window size: 1928x1254
Font Size Adjustment: 96pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128m
Bandwidth: 3000kbit/s
LOD factor: 1.375
Render quality: 3
Texture memory: 8192MB
Disk cache: Max size 2150.4 MB (1.1% used)

J2C Decoder Version: KDU v8.4.1
Audio Driver Version: OpenAL, version 1.1 ALSOFT 1.24.2 / OpenAL Community / OpenAL Soft: OpenAL Soft
Dullahan: 1.21.0.202508272159
CEF: 139.0.28+g55ab8a8+chromium-139.0.7258.139
Chromium: 139.0.7258.139
LibVLC Version: 3.0.21
Voice Server Version:

September 19 2025 16:46:34

Description

CEF does not load on Windows if the viewer is Run as administrator.

Found by Kurt Linden. Thanks!

Reproduction steps

1. Install the Windows viewer from https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/releases/tag/Second_Life_Release%23c743ea2b-2025.07
2. Right-click the viewer shortcut and choose Run as administrator.
3. (If it's the first time you've run the viewer as administrator you will see the new user login screen. Log in, log out, and Run as administrator again.)

Observed: Only the top field with the username and password fields is visible. The bottom portion of the screen is black.
No web pages from the Help menu will load.

Expected: To see the splash screen - https://viewer-splash.secondlife.com/
Maybe this is the new expected behavior. In any case, it's different than 2025.06, so I'm noting it.
I don't know if any users run the viewer this way. QA ran into it because a test was running as administrator

admin 7.2.2.17774206511 SecondLife.log

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[Geenz]

Re-evaluate the need to fix this - viewer should not be ran as admin. Currently QA does this with automated test plans.