I swear I read on the Cakewalk site that it was no longer necessary to install as Admin. Of course I  just looked for this and could not find it.
 
Only thing I found was if you get this
Installation Error: DeleteFile Failed; code 5 Access Denied
Then run as Admin.
 
So I did not run as Admin when I ran the X3 install. I have had no issues whatsoever and I run as a user belonging to Administrators.
If your user account is part of the Administrator group you have elevated privileges anyway and if the installer encounters a permissions issue, the UAC warning should pop up and allow you to run whatever is complaining. Most people on a non-corporate PC do not run as a local user but as a member of the Admin group.
Normally installing a program as administrator is required if the program writes to folders where a local user may not have write permissions. It is also required if the program is to used by all local users on that pc.
 
Sometimes programs will install as another unique user just for that program. Perhaps some 3rd party plugins or synths do this and require running Sonar as Admin.  
 
One of my friends had an issue with the C runtime libraries during install but I think he declined the UAC popup.
 
Maybe one the bakers could chime in on this and give a definitive answer?
 
Michael
 

Ok I found it but I cannot post a link so I will paste the appropriate section  It is the X3 setup instructions.
 
Previous versions of SONAR required a user to have Windows Administrator status. This is no longer the case. Any level of user can now install and run SONAR. Only one copy of SONAR per machine is necessary for multiple users to run SONAR with each user’s personal settings.

 
Michael
 

I thought that was the case, BUT there have been NUMEROUS instances with X1, X2, AND X3, where problems went away immediately after installing with Run As Administrator, and also often with launching Sonar with Run As Admin.
 
I understand the doc says it can, but reality begs to differ, as far as I can tell.
 
Bob Bone
 

@microapp - the Administrator privileges of a user are different then the EXECUTION privileges you get with Run As Administrator.  They are not the same level of privileges.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

Bob,
Yes I know there are privileges a member of admin does not have by default. System protected files and so forth. This is why you will sometimes get the UAC popup even if you are an admin (unless you disable the UAC notification).
There are also accounts with even higher privileges...e.g.  Trusted Installer and System. There are protected elements of the registry that NO user can modify without a special utility as well.
In the setup compiler I use (Inno setup) you can tell it to create the installer so that it will run as admin if there is something that needs admin privileges during install.
 
I would not be surprised that you would need to run Sonar as admin if you installed as admin. 
 
All I am saying is that Cakewalk said you don't need to install or run as admin, I did not and do not and everything works. I just would like to understand why some folks need to since I make my living designing hardware and writing code.
 
I am completely in agreement with you Bob, if necessary by all means run as admin. After all the point is to make music, yes?
 
Things like this are especially difficult to track down if you do not know the exact history of the PC in question.
I am still su****ious of 3rd party plugins/synths and perhaps installs of previous Sonar versions. 
 
Michael