I am trying to install Arduino for use in a High School classroom on Windows 7 64bit machines. I have installed the latest version of the software per the teacher's request and as an administrator and it runs fine. When I log in as a student and run the program a window flashes and closes, and nothing happens.
I downloaded the "Windows ZIP file for non admin install" files as a student and tried to run the program and got the exact same results.
Do users have to be a local administrator on the machine to run Arduino? If so, is there any way around it? If not, any ideas on what the problem could be?
My guess is that the issue is Arduino is trying to access or create the preferences.txt file at C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Arduino15 and then closing because it is unable to do so.
You could try running the Arduino IDE in portable mode. To do this, create a folder inside the Arduino IDE installation folder named portable and restart the IDE. This will cause the preferences and hardware files installed via Boards Manager to be installed to that portable folder instead of to C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Arduino15. This has worked for several other people in your situation in the past.