Recently I wanted to create a new web application in SharePoint and so I went to the Central Admin website to create one, but the option was missing. Even though I was logged in as the System Account, the farm administration account I couldn’t see the link. If I navigated directly to /_admin/extendvs.aspx I got an access denied message and none of the accounts configured for SharePoint would allow me access.
So after a lot of head scratching I remembered that I had navigated directly to the administration site directly in an existing browser session and had not used the link from Start Menu. As soon as I navigated from the start menu I realized that I was using Windows Server 2008 and that Central Admin has to be run with administrator (or)service account privileges.
