Background
We have a SharePoint 2013 farm and were retracting a solution; we were using Chrome browser. In the browser our site was open in two tabs and in one tab was central admin. When we were trying to retract a solution through central admin we were getting an “Access Denied” error. We are logged in with user having Administrator rights so it seems not to be a user permission issue.
It was a very small fix but I thought to share, as maybe it can save you time.
Error and Stack Trace
Access denied. Only machine administrators are allowed to create administration service job definitions of type
Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionDeploymentJobDefinition, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c.Application error when access /_admin/RetractSolution.aspx, Error=Access denied. Only machine administrators are allowed to create administration service job definitions of type: Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionDeploymentJobDefinition, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=15.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAdministrationServiceJobDefinition..ctor(String name, SPService service, SPServer server, SPJobLockType lockType) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionDeploymentJobDefinition..ctor(String solutionName, Guid solutionId, UInt32 lcid, SPTimerService service, SPCompatibilityRange compatibilityRange) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionLanguagePack.CreateSolutionDeployTimerJob(DateTime... e4a5099e-e182-6064-8575-d8b087e7d93cGeneral 8nca Medium ... dt, Collection`1 webApplications, SPSolutionDeploymentJobType jobType, Boolean globalInstallDlls, Boolean force, Boolean isRestore, SPCompatibilityRange compatibilityRange) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.SolutionPageBase.CreateDeploymentJob(Boolean deploy, String strSelectedWeb, Boolean globalInstall, DateTime dt, Boolean localDeployment) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.RetractSolutionPage.BtnSubmit_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsy... e4a5099e-e182-6064-8575-d8b087e7d93c
Solutions
It seems to be a weird error. No user permission issue.
We Googled a lot and then got the below article related to the same issue but not the exact one.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/30757.sharepoint-troubleshooting-access-denied-only-machine-administrators-are-allowed-to-create-administration-service-job.aspx
In the above article the exact issue isn't mentioned but at least we got an idea. We have closed the browser, opened the central admin again with the run as administrator option, tried again and it worked like a charm.
Thanks!