Qt: Cannot execute '': The requested operation requires elevation

What's your executable's file name? Without an embedded manifest, windows tries to be smart and wants to run executables with "install", "update", "setup", "patch", etc. in the file name as administrator. It even checks for those names within words such as "autoupdate".

The problem is that qmake/mingw doesn't embed those manifests, while MSVC does. If someone has a clean solution to that problem, I'd be interested to learn about it.

If application you develop require administrator privileges, you cannot simply run it from Qt creator, started under non privileged account.

You can run your Qt creator as Administrtor.

Or you can start your application from QtCreator using runas utility. But in this case you would not be able to see debug output in QtCreator console window and debug application.