error during connect: In the default daemon configuration on Windows, the docker client must be run with elevated privileges to connect.: Post

Context and Solution: I ran docker system prune -a since my Windows 11 machine was short of space and the error below was thrown.

In Windows11, I have noticed that when I start the machine, Docker Desktop is not started automatically. Once that was done(by double clicking the docker desktop icon), prune happened successfully!

Error:

docker system prune -a

WARNING! This will remove:

  - all stopped containers

  - all networks not used by at least one container

  - all images without at least one container associated to them

  - all build cache

Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y

error during connect: In the default daemon configuration on Windows, the docker client must be run with elevated privileges to connect.: Post "http://%2F%2F.%2Fpipe%2Fdocker_engine/v1.24/containers/prune": open //./pipe/docker_engine: The system cannot find the file specified.