# atlas upgrade failed: please run the terminal as Administrator and try again > Reopen the terminal as Administrator and re-run `atlas upgrade`, because choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals. `atlas upgrade` stops with "Upgrade failed" and then "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again" because the install method is choco and choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals. Reopen the terminal as Administrator and re-run `atlas upgrade`. Atlas prints the elevation hint instead of the raw stderr only in this specific case, when it catches UpgradeFailedError and the stderr contains "not running from an elevated command shell". ## Symptom `atlas upgrade` stops with "Upgrade failed" and then prints: Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again. The upgrade does not proceed and Atlas stays on the installed version. ## Cause The Atlas upgrade command catches UpgradeFailedError and, when the install method is choco and the stderr contains "not running from an elevated command shell", it prints the elevation hint instead of the raw stderr. Choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals. ## Fix 1. Reopen the terminal as Administrator and re-run `atlas upgrade`. 2. For other install methods, the raw stderr from UpgradeFailedError is printed; read it directly. 3. If the version check itself fails, the message is: Atlas update check failed: . 4. If Atlas is already on the target version, upgrade is skipped with a warning; use --force to reinstall. ## Why does atlas upgrade ask me to run as Administrator `atlas upgrade` asks you to run as Administrator because your Atlas install method is choco, and choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals. Atlas catches UpgradeFailedError, sees stderr containing "not running from an elevated command shell", and prints that 1 elevation hint instead of the raw stderr. The hint is a translation, not a guess. Atlas inspects the failure it caught: the install method has to be choco, and choco's own stderr has to contain the phrase "not running from an elevated command shell". When both conditions hold, Atlas replaces the raw stderr with the plain-English line "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again", because that is the only action that resolves it. The elevation requirement comes from choco itself, so no Atlas flag or configuration key can bypass it. An unelevated terminal simply cannot complete a choco upgrade. ## How to fix the Atlas upgrade elevation error Fix the Atlas upgrade elevation error in 2 steps: reopen the terminal as Administrator, then re-run `atlas upgrade`. Because choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals, elevating the shell is the entire fix, and no Atlas configuration change is involved. Reopen the terminal itself with Administrator rights rather than trying to elevate mid-session, because the privilege level of a running shell cannot be changed after the fact. Once the elevated terminal is open, re-run `atlas upgrade` in it. If the same "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again" line appears in a shell you believe is elevated, the shell is not actually elevated, or `atlas upgrade` is being dispatched to a different, unelevated process. Verify the terminal's privilege level before assuming the message is wrong. ## What atlas upgrade prints for other install methods For install methods other than choco, `atlas upgrade` prints the raw stderr from UpgradeFailedError, so read it directly. The elevation hint is choco-specific, which means a non-choco Atlas install that fails to upgrade in 2026 will never show "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again". The distinction is practical. If you are on a non-choco install and the upgrade fails, do not go hunting for a privileges problem. Atlas hands you the installer's own stderr unmodified, and that text is the actual diagnosis. Read it before changing anything. The special-cased elevation hint exists only because choco's stderr on this condition is opaque enough that Atlas rewrites it into an actionable instruction. Every other failure keeps its original wording precisely so you can act on the real cause instead of a generic message. ## What Atlas update check failed means Atlas prints "Atlas update check failed: " when the version check itself fails, which is a different problem from the elevation error. In 2026 that message means `atlas upgrade` never reached the install step, so choco's requirement to run from an elevated terminal is not what stopped it. Read the reason in the angle brackets, because it is where the information lives. A failed version check is not an UpgradeFailedError, so Atlas does not print the elevation hint and it does not print installer stderr. Running the terminal as Administrator will not help here, and re-running the upgrade in an elevated shell will just reproduce the same check failure. Treat "Atlas update check failed" as its own class of problem, and diagnose it from the reason Atlas gives you rather than from the upgrade path's remedies. ## Why atlas upgrade skips when already on the target version `atlas upgrade` skips with a warning when Atlas is already on the target version, because there are 0 changes left to apply. Use --force to reinstall if you want the upgrade to run anyway, for example after a partial install left the binary in a state you no longer trust. The skip is not an error, and it is easy to misread as one when you were expecting an upgrade to happen. Atlas warns instead of failing, because reinstalling an identical version is normally wasted work. Reach for --force when you have a reason to believe the existing installation is damaged rather than merely current. Note the ordering caveat: on a choco install, a forced reinstall still goes through choco, so it still requires an elevated terminal, and running it unelevated will produce the same "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again" line. ## How to verify the atlas upgrade fix worked Verify the Atlas upgrade fix by re-running `atlas upgrade` inside the Administrator terminal. Success means both messages are gone, "Upgrade failed" and "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again", and choco completes the upgrade in 2026 without raising UpgradeFailedError. If Atlas instead warns that it is already on the target version, the upgrade already succeeded on a previous run and there is nothing left to do; use --force only if you specifically want a reinstall. If "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again" appears again, the terminal is not actually elevated. And if a different message appears entirely, such as "Atlas update check failed", you have moved past the elevation problem into a separate failure, so read the new reason and diagnose that instead. ## FAQ ### How do I fix "Please run the terminal as Administrator and try again" in Atlas? Reopen the terminal as Administrator and re-run `atlas upgrade`. The message appears because the install method is choco, and choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals. ### Why does atlas upgrade need an elevated shell? Choco only allows install and upgrade in elevated command shells. Atlas catches UpgradeFailedError, detects stderr containing "not running from an elevated command shell", and prints the elevation hint instead. ### Can I bypass the Atlas upgrade elevation requirement? No. The elevation requirement comes from choco itself, not from Atlas, so no Atlas flag or config key avoids it. Reopen the terminal as Administrator and re-run `atlas upgrade`. ### What does atlas upgrade print if I did not install with choco? For other install methods, the raw stderr from UpgradeFailedError is printed, so read it directly. The Administrator hint is choco-specific and will not appear on a non-choco install. ### What does "Atlas update check failed" mean? "Atlas update check failed: " means the version check itself failed, before any upgrade was attempted. Read the reason; elevating the terminal will not help with this one. ### Why did atlas upgrade skip the upgrade? If Atlas is already on the target version, the upgrade is skipped with a warning. Use --force to reinstall if you want the install to run anyway. ### Does atlas upgrade --force still need Administrator on choco? Yes. A forced reinstall on a choco install still runs through choco, which only allows install and upgrade in elevated terminals, so run it from an Administrator terminal. --- Canonical HTML: https://runatlas.sh/resources/troubleshooting/upgrade-requires-elevated-shell Source of truth: aeo_pages row `/resources/troubleshooting/upgrade-requires-elevated-shell` (segment: Troubleshooting) (this file is generated from it, never hand-edited). Licence: Atlas is proprietary with a free core. It is not open source and there is no public source repository.