I’ve read about how a lot of people have chosen to disable User Account Control (UAC) in Vista because of the headaches that can result from it. That’s mostly because of applications that have not yet been programmed to run in a general user mode, and they are still accustomed to running as a privileged user just as they did in XP.
If you’ve chosen to leave UAC enabled then there are a few different ways you can selectively bypass the UAC prompt without disabling it all together. One way is to take ownership of files, but there is also another rather clever method that takes advantage of the Task Scheduler. Here’s some background as to how it works:
Few days ago I tried to run some scheduled task that required admin privileges. After some investigation I found out that you can specify that scheduled task can run using highest privileges.
These scheduled tasks don’t prompt you with UAC. First idea that came to my mind was – OK, so if scheduled task runs on demand, then it should in fact disable UAC for specific program? I tried it and it worked… So for some time I was using on demand scheduled tasks – for example instead of running MMC I run Schtasks /Run /TN “Elevated\MMC”.
The end result is a context menu entry that shows up whenever you right-click on a file or shortcut (as pictured above). It’s labeled “Elevate me,” and works exactly as advertised. When you select that option from the menu the program runs as an administrator without a single UAC prompt.
To confirm this I ran the command line and tried to release my IP address. When running the command line normally it wouldn’t let me make the change, but using the “Elevate me” option made it possible to release my IP. And I never had a UAC prompt asking if I wanted to confirm the action.
You can also turn this into a shortcut so that you won’t even have to right-click on a file to elevate it, but you really only have to do that if a particular program always needs to run as an administrator.
Download Elevator [via Lifehacker]
Thanks, nice tip.
These can be done even easier without that utility.
For running a scheduled task, just set it to run as the “SYSTEM” user.
For something that you run normally, right click on a shortcut, open the properties, click advanced, then check the box that says “Run as administrator”. If you want to set in on an the executable itself instead of just one shortcut, open the properties and check the “Run as administrator” box at the bottom of the compatibility tab. Then every time you run that shortcut/executable it will come up with a UAC prompt, then run with full administrator access.
That does accomplish the same thing, but the difference with the tip above is that you won’t see a UAC prompt when running the app using the scheduled tasks. If you check the “Run as Administrator” box in the properties you’ll see a prompt each tiem you try to run it.
If you schedule a task to run as SYSTEM there will be no UAC at all, because it runs under a fully privileged account. You will still see one when you launch a normal app though with the run as box checked.
This tip creates a scheduled task on-the-fly when the user clicks the “Elevate Me” option, and so it works similarly to running it as System.
I find the easiest way to stop UAC annoying you is to turn it off. I’d rather be impeded by a virus every few months than have my entire PC screech to a screen-dimming halt every time I rename or cut/paste a file. Not that I’ve had a virus for the past three years anyway.
For some people that might be the route to go, but I’ve set several people up with Vista over the past year and it has saved me from a lot of headaches. Most of their computers have been kept surprisingly clean, and they don’t have a dozen toolbars installed in Internet Explorer.