Alternative to giving UAC rights to install

[Parmenides]

Is there any sort of program that gives tiered control over what an installer does to your system?

Rather than the traditional UAC: "Do you want this installer admin rights to do whatever it wants to your system?", is there a program that will help the installer process by asking a series of questions like, "Do you want this registry edit?", "Do you want these file permission changes?." Basically, the end result is that if you don't say yes to everything the program might not install right (which can possibly be a good thing).

 

[PTNL]

An installer (unless it was elevated) runs under permissions of the logged in user account. So what exactly are you trying to prevent an installer from doing that a user could manually do without warning/objection? How would you expect a person that didn't write the software in question to know what is safe or required from the list of additions/changes performed by an installer?

 

[devil22]

He probably means, fine grained control over admin level changes, not user level. But no, unless the installer is written to facilitate that, it's probably not going to happen.

 

[PTNL]

He probably means, fine grained control over admin level changes, not user level.

Variations in user account restrictions to local machine resources adds another layer to an already confusing question. Getting past topic speculations requires answers from the OP to the questions posed thus far, which may or may not happen.

 

[Parmenides]

Yeah, I was speaking of fine grained control like devil22 said.

 

[PTNL]

Yeah, I was speaking of fine grained control like devil22 said.

Again, how could you expect a consumer (or anyone that didn't write the software) to know what is required or optional at that granular level?

This discussion seems more like the tip of an iceberg. Sharing what happened that lead to the creation of this thread may give more insight and a better understanding of the actual problem.