Windows Vista/7/8 and up: setting the user environment variables as regular user (non-administrator)
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/14
As a non-administrator, as of Windows Vista, you are not allowed to change the environment variables the regular way.
Various people have quoted the official Microsoft way of changing the environment variables as a regular user on Windows Vista and up (including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 and up).
It means going through the account settings doing half a dozen steps or so.
Quickest way however is to put this in a batch file to set/edit those environment variables like PATH:
"C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe" sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables
Whereas for the full sysdm.cpl you need Administrator privileges, you don’t for this specific rundll32 call.
The cool thing is that Windows will automatically merge the user and system environment PATH in this format:
system-PATH;user-PATH
–jeroen
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