Multiple Instances of the Admin Console

Question

Why am I seeing the message More than one instance of this program detected?

Answer

This message appears by design. Privileged Identity does not provide its own networking and is reliant upon Windows networking. The host system uses whatever connection is available, which also means authentication is already complete when the connection is established. If two people were allowed to launch the management console at the same time, without this check in place the two users would be able to manage each other's systems.

Example

When person A launches Privileged Identity and uses it to manage their systems, Windows maintains a connection to those systems for a certain period of time, and person A remains authenticated to access those systems. If person B opens Privileged Identity and attempts to connect to those same systems, they can access those systems using person A's credentials.

To avoid this issue, a limit is applied to allow only one user at a time per system.