I'm marking this as a community wiki because I'm not really looking for one complete answer. So if you feel like posting one or two things that will activate the UAC prompt instead of a comprehensive list then go ahead.
What actions in Windows will activate UAC? I'd like to avoid it as much as possible because my application doesn't need admin privileges. And I'm sure many other people want to avoid it.
Specifically, I would like to know if reading from the registry would activate it. Or writing to it?
You don't need to address the above question, just anything that will activate it is fair game.
It's really hard to Google anything about UAC because you get bombarded with articles about how to disable it. And I'd rather not have my application make the assumption UAC is disabled.
Nothing "activates" UAC.
If your application would fail to run as a standard user under Windows XP it will fail to run under Windows Vista or Windows 7 as a standard user.
What you are really asking is: what actions can a standard user not perform under Windows?
The things a standard user cannot do are pretty well known (they've been the same since Windows 2000). The main ones are:
modify anything in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
modify anything in the Windows directory
modify anything in the Program Files folder
If you try to do any of those they will fail on:
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Nobody should have been running as an administrator for day-to-day computer use. If your application did any of those bad things in Windows XP it would fail. The user would have to:
logon (or fast user switch) to an administrator
perform the administrative task
switch back to their real account
UAC is a convience mechanism, allowing you to easily temporarily switch to an administrator. Nothing you do will "trigger" it; you have to make it happen.
If you know your code needs to modify a file in C:\Program Files\My App\Data, then you should add a button on your form that will trigger the elevation.
You then need to launch an (elevated) copy of your program, do the thing, and close.
I created a launch4j installer (an exe-wrapper for java programs) and named it "MyApp.exe". It doesn't need any admin authentication. It just runs fine without any UAC prompt.
BUT: If I rename this installer to "install.exe" or "setup.exe", the UAC icon appears and I get a UAC promp when starting the installer.
Seems as if there are some "reserved words" in filenames that cause windows to start a program with elevated rights (UAC).
My application needs administrative access and I want it to run without any hassles in Windows 7.
I have the following options
1.Ask the user using the application to turn off UAC. This is a last resort option and would hate to do that.
2.Embed a manifest in the application that says elevate to adminstrator privelege. This will work but it seems that it will bring up a dialog requiring users consent every time a user runs the application.
3. Configure the application to run in Windows XP compatibility mode. This works, but i had to do this using explorer->application properties. if can I do this programmatically during installation time, I would really prefer this option. My question is if there is any way to achieve this.
regards
Ganesh
Try making an application compatibility shim that says your app needs the XP compatibility mode, and distributing it with your app. A shim is a means for administrators to simplify installation of a 3rd party app that needs compatibility settings - it saves them tweaking each PC individually. You can probably roll it into your install program with a little ingenuity.
I've gotten pretty used to dealing with the UAC dialog, running Vista for the last 2 years. If it bugs you, I have to wonder how much experience you have using post-XP OS'es.
As a user I think there are two ways to look at it:
The program inherently requires admin. For these, I very much appreciate the dialog, as I know it means nobody's going to sneakily run that thing in the background on me and modify my system.
The program inherently does not require admin. Most programs only need admin to auto-update themselves (and probably shouldn't need it then). My attitude is that these programs are poorly-designed. Such a program should only invoke AUC if it discovers it needs to update, not every single frigging time I start it up. This is a security issue too, as any buffer overflow someone finds in the entire program puts me at risk.
Localize the need for UAC as much as you possibly can. The best would be to put in a separate executable. (eg: an "updater")
I made an updater which silently runs in XP and works just fine. But when it comes to Vista, the idea of silent installation gets ruined when UAC prompts the user to cancel or allow the user from running the program.
Is there anything at all we can do about this?
Thanks...
I know this post is old... 4 months to be exact. But Actually, yes it is VERY VERY possible. I wish to correct the people above.
Just add this line to your NSIS script.
RequestExecutionLevel user
This line tells Windows Vista and Windows 7 that this program does not require administrative access, which Vista/7 thinks.
Unfortunately there's no way around this. UAC is actually intended specifically to prevent this type of thing where programs install software or make changes to the machine without the user's awarness.
This is effectively a side effect of UAC and user permissions. From a security perspective, it does make sense.
If this is something you need to do, you should look to implement a system that is designed to run patching and deployments with elevated permissions. Microsoft's own Systems Management Server would do the trick, but is obviously quite a large scale solution!
You can read about it here.
UAC for non-MSI installs is a bit of a grey area, with signed MSI packages things get much easier and less confusing for the user.
You might want to take a look at Clickonce Deployment which may solve some of your problems.
Actually, it is possible, under very preconceived circumstances. Specifically, "service" can launch an installer, in a user session, with full privileges and bypass UAC prompting (already has it).
Of course this requires your user to have already installed your service, which DOES require Admin approval.
I have switched to Vista recently and I wanted to keep UAC turned on, as I agree it increases computer security a lot. Some developer tools I use regularly require running elevated:
PIX for Windows
Visual Studio 2005 (elevated privileges seem to be needed for debugging and for IncrediBuild to work)
mapped and substed drives: The elevated process does not seem to see the drives I have mapped in my user account. This article describes the problem, but I am not sure how could I implement its final suggestion to "map these drives in the context of the elevated login".
I have experimented with many suggestions I have found, Compatibility Administrator seemed quite promising, but the result was still not what I wanted. When I used RunAsInvoker, there was no UAC prompt, but the Visual Studio did not work. When I used RunAsAdmin or RunAsHighest, it worked, but there was the prompt.
Is there any way how to teach UAC to remember some particular application should always run elevated and never prompt me about this, or some other way how to allow me launching VS elevated without the prompt? If there is no way to do it, does there exist some security reason why it cannot be done?
Try:
Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode = Elevate without prompting.
I've had to turn UAC off for my 2008 dev system also, despite similar feelings about wanting to be able to use it. It's just too painful to need to keep track of the running context of every single application in order for things like drag/drop between windows to work, or interacting with remote systems, or debugging scenarios, or any number of other tasks. UAC was a good idea in theory, but there seems to have been so little effort put in to making it functionally useful for real-world power users, that at the end of the day, the only feasible solution is to disable it entirely.
Windows 7 will purportedly be somewhat better with eliminating the constant prompts, but unless they really work to address all the cross-application and remote access issues, it's still going to be a non-starter for anyone other than novice users. Here's to hoping they eventually get it to be actually usable.
VS 2005 was a pain in Vista, and there's a lot of little gotchas even when running as administrator. See if you can upgrade to 2008, which works a lot better on Vista.
Unfortunately UAC prompt is mandatory in windows Vista, when UAC is enabled.
One solution that worked for me is to have a elevated command line and a bunch of non-ui shell scripts that run elevated from there for some tasks.
Also to debug I've setup another computer in which I can run a remote debugging session, it is a bit tricky to configure with VS 2005, the plus is that if you crash/hang the remote session it didn't crash your main computer :)
PD: VS 2008 is slightly nicer in vista than VS 2005 give it a try if you can.
As far as I'm aware, you can't get everything you want (UAC on, VS working without prompts).
However, there's a better workaround than "have someone else test it with LUA:" A Virtual PC. Use Virtual PC (free from Microsoft) to create a guest operating system. Install Vista and set up a regular user as well as your default admin. Test your apps on that VPC using the regular (non-elevated) user. This at least gives you the early indication of LUA issues without too many major headaches.
I agree that it's a bit of a pain (and I've noticed VS2008 doesn't bug me with UAC prompts under Vista nor Win7 beta), but it is what it is. VS2005, particularly in debugging, requires elevation to attach to processes, etc.
For the record, my current "solution" to this problem, after a few days of experimenting with it, is:
turn UAC off
make sure somebody else tests the application with a Standard User Acount on a regular basis
... i.e. use the same pattern which worked in WindowsXP before.
I would like to see some other solution, but so far nothing I have tried gave me all of what I want, i,e. UAC on, Visual Studio working and no prompt on running VS. I would like to keep UAC on, but it was too annoying for me to confirm the elevation every time I run the tools.
Norton has an interesting tool to de-tune UAC and make it a little easier to live with...at the cost of feedback about what programs you run going to Norton. There is a good write-up about it here:
http://www.betanews.com/article/New_Norton_Vista_tool_trades_UAC_for_online_feedback/1223668881
The download is here:
http://www.nortonlabs.com/inthelab/uac.php
Finally, there is an interesting little tool to "snooze" UAC which costs $5 (30 Day trial). I can't vouch for either tool as I have not tried them personally.
http://www.uacsnooze.com/
I didn't upgrade to Vista until May or so and one of the things I've always heard developers I know in real life say is "first thing you should do is turn off that UAC crap"
Well, I've left it on this whole time for a few reasons. First, just as a failsafe in case I do something idiotic like have a momentary lapse of reason and run an attachment from an email, or in case I view a site which hits some unpatched exploit. Second, as a big of an experiment to see how good or bad it really is.
Finally, I figure that it enforces some better practices. I used to develop every website in Windows directly in inetpub\wwwroot (Visual Studio .NET 2003 more or less required this) but now I develop them elsewhere because the UAC clickfest is a nightmare. I figure this is Microsoft's way of saying "you should really be doing it this way".
By way of another analogy - if you wrote a web app which runs on XP and 2000 just fine but requires 50 different security features of Server 2003 to be turned off, the real solution might be instead to just fix the application such that it doesn't require the security features to be turned off.
But now I'm having to work with an app which is really really NOT designed to be developed outside of inetpub/wwwroot and so UAC is really a nuisance. It's beyond the scope of the project to rectify this. I want to stick to my guns and leave UAC on but I'm also worried about being so autopilot about clicking "Yes" or "Allow" three times every time I need to modify a file.
Am I just being hard headed? Do most developers on Vista leave the UAC on or off? And for the instance described above, is there a better/easier way?
I think it is necessary to leave UAC on on a test machine, so you can see what a real user would see using your app. However, I turn it off on my development machine since I find it distracting, and I trust myself enough to not need it.
(Hopefully your test machine != your dev machine right?)
All this being said, I support UAC, and I am not recommending anyone else turn it off, especially 'common users'.
I code in a standard user account, with UAC turned on.
No I do not close UAC.
Programming C# winform, and web with IIS. Database is progresql. No need to bother with UAC. Some program only require 1 authorization, not a big deal.
I keep UAC on. I find it useful to develop in an environment similar to my end user. That way if I write any code which is trying to read / write from restricted areas I will know about it quicker.
UAC is incredibly annoying at first when you get a new system. The problem is that when you first start out with a new install you have all kinds of programs to set up and settings to tweak. It seems like you see the UAC prompt every 5 minutes.
After a while, two things happen:
You're not setting up as much new stuff.
You've become a little more used to the prompt.
At this point UAC isn't so bad anymore. I have UAC on and I've only seen one or two prompts in the last couple weeks. That's right about perfect: if I see a prompt I wasn't expecting I know to make sure I really want to proceed.
I will argue that the 2nd effect kind of defeats the purpose. What they should do is have UAC disabled by default, but for the first month only. After the first month prompt you to turn UAC on, where the default option for someone who doesn't really read things is to turn it on. Then people aren't annoyed during their setup period, and it's easier to make an informed choice about what you want to do with UAC.
I leave it on
I leave it on, but have it set to automatically elevate privileges when necessary. It's a fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless.
Services like Microsoft SQL Server runs with administrator privileges. Visual Studio on the other hand does not. Nor do most developer-tools.
I make heavy use of virtual machines to 1) make sure my development environment is safe at all times, and 2) to test out software with the potential of leaving my machine FUBAR. And 3) to limit down-time, restoring my development environment, "in case I do something idiotic like have a momentary lapse of reason and run an attachment from an email" :)
I have been using Windows 2008 in my workstation following the advices on http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ and it has worked great for me. I don't remember turning off UAC, but certainly I haven't suffered it, so I guess it's turned off.
As others have said, you do need to have test [virtual] machines that are configured as close as possible to the ones your users will have so you won't have any surprises deploying your app.
I think whether you do this or not should depend on the target audience for your application, although I can completely understand people disabling it.
If all your users run Vista with UAC disabled then I think you can get away with turning it off, but this probably isn't realistic--or advisable. At the other end of the spectrum, our applications are used by a vast number of people with every conceivable version and configuration of Windows from Win2k onwards, and obviously including Vista and Server 2008. Since we're an ISV with no control over our users' environments, or over policies governing their privileges and administration, I always leave UAC enabled--even though it annoys me beyond all reason at times--because then I know about any possible problems it might cause for people using our applications sooner rather than later.
Disclaimer: most of my actual coding time is spent on Windows XP, although I have a Vista 64-bit test machine under my desk which I use on a daily basis for testing. Generally I'll use this box around 20 - 30% of the time.
Developing or not developing - was the first thing I did after installing vista. Just seemed an annoying nuisance at best.
Instead of running antivirus to suck away my CPU cycles (I need as many as I can with RDPs and VMs running all the time). I just leave UAC on as a safeguard to double check and make sure only certain things run. It does more than that though, it also restricts programs access to sensitive areas, so a program basically can't trash your system without you allowing it through UAC. I have not had a problem yet and my system runs only what I need it to run, quickly and smoothly.
It's too annoying for me, it gets turned off as soon as I install Vista.
I turn it off as soon as I install the OS. Security by endless modal dialogs is no security at all. Normal users just get used to clicking even more 'OK' buttons after a couple of weeks or so.
EDIT: Wow, down-voted huh? Must be some Microsoft employees around here...Of course it should remain on on a test machine, probably should have mentioned that.
I turn it off on computers that I am using.
When testing, I test in the target environment, which means I may have UAC on or off.
I see no benefit to developing with it on.
I find it extremely annoying and turn it off at all times, I trust myself enough to not have to have fail safes in place. If I screw up and run some dodgy application that's my bad and I'll live with the consequences. Meanwhile I'm not spending 5 minutes of my day clicking though some damn annoying popups.
I have it off, but that's because I trust myself entirely too much. Its funny though, it seems to make the average user (I live in Jourdanton TX, we have a lot of "average users" here in the middle of nowhere) afraid of the control panel, because it causes all these weird prompts to come up and wants their password every 5 minutes if they start to poke around.
That said, I think it depends on your level of expertise with the system. On your dev machine, yes, definitely turn the darn thing off. I haven't gone a day this week without needing to install or update some piece of software, and I don't like having to elevate myself to admin status to have to do that.
What I would really like is the ability to have it elevate for a period of time, or say automatically turn itself back on when I log off, so that I could do an entire session's worth of installing stuff without being bothered, and then be secure again when I was done and (inevitably) had to restart the machine as seems to be common practice with windows installers now.
And all that ranting aside, I think for your test machine, it should definitely be on. Not because I necessarily agree with the feature (any more than I agree that the Administrator account should be disabled permananty, I love that account way too much) but because the User is very likely to have it turned on, and you need to see your program through their eyes. This is especially true if your program is going to require elevation, say to change a setting or modify a certain directory, so that you can prompt your users to accept the UAC warning in your program, which adds an extra layer of comfort to the user I think.
Oh, and as for the one program, let me harp on you just slightly. Shouldn't the program have a define somewhere in the main header files that tells it where its "working directory" is? If this is already the case, then why is it so hard to change that working directory to somewhere else? If its not the case, shame on you, and you should go fix that. ^_^ That would have saved you a lot of trouble.
-Nicholas
I'm running into issues where our build scripts do things like manipulate registry entries or add things to the GAC. We're trying to get away from this stuff but until we do it's there and requires privilege escalation. So the build scripts get run from an Administrator command window. The problem comes in when I open Visual Studio 2008 and try to build part of the application - I can't as a normal user because the output files can't be overwritten because the build in the Admin console produced the same files at a higher privilege level. It's causing me a lot of frustration and I'm thinking the best way is to turn UAC off for now but I'm very reluctant to do so.
Because I've got post-build scripts to copy executables into the Program Files directory for testing I run Visual Studio with elevated privileges.
One tip I've found that makes life easier, is that to quickly start a command prompt with elevated privileges you can:
press Window Key
type "cmd"
Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Left cursor key (with right pinky) to move to "Continue" button on UAC dialog
Enter
I always keep one open for launching my IDE and running build scripts.
The only downside I've found is that elevated windows don't interact with some of my window tweaking software like KatMouse and Switcher.
No, but I do change some settings:
Do not prompt for elevation if not in the administrators group.
Evelvate automatically if you are the [machine]\administrator
I do not put myself in the administrators group.
Juts a plain old user, with no elevation prompts.
Use Run As if developing/debugging web apps with development server
I code with UAC off. I found annoying to see all those popups when i open visual studio or star uml, or just want to change a setting in my machine. I have always installed a good internet security suite that keeped me "virus free" on my machine for long years and i don't see the point to have always an "are you sure" prompt on every task i do. I agree with Ed because everyone click ok.
Exemple : install a firewall to some member of your family. When they will be prompted if app XYZ can connect to the internet, they will click yes. They will not make the distinction between a good app and a spyware/virus. It's the same thing with UAC.
I leave UAC on, but have VS set to always run as admin. The only real reason why I do that though is that I mostly work on software that requires admin permissions to run anyway. (And yes, I know that should be the minority, but my app happens to be one of those -- it's a soft-realtime hardware controller.)
For general purpose apps, you must at least test with UAC enabled; while you could do that on a separate machine, it's easier to test on your dev machine. And the prompt isn't that much of an imposition, especially if you disable the "secure desktop" option (which reacts very slowly with most graphics cards when enabled).
If you stay on Vista, turn off UAC and rely on Microsoft Security Essentials' real-time monitor to intercept anything that wants to alter your system. Or, upgrade to Win7, where you can leave UAC on and control the levels at which you want UAC to notify and interrupt the execution.
EDIT: It's very easy to exploit a Windows computer anyway, so what's the sense in having UAC turned on, if it really doesn't guarantee protection?