Bypass UAC for a single app?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Hey all,

So I have been introducing my 8 year old stepson to the wonderful world of computers. Two Christmases ago, when he was 7 I built him a desktop, and to start him off put Linux Mint on it, as it is a good learning OS that he can't easily break without admin rights.

He became more interested in games that were not on Linux however, so last Christmas we did a stepdad/stepson desktop upgrade project and added Windows 10. He didn't understand everything yet, but at least he got to see how all the components go together and hopefully get a better comfort level with computers.

So, windows gaming has been a minor hit with him. IN the beginning he still preferred his tablet more, but over time he has been drifting more and more to the desktop.

Lately he has been wanting to do screen recordings and upload them to Youtube, like all the Minecraft youtube personalities do. (This gives us a little discomfort since he is only 8, but we screen everything he wants to upload and keep an eye on who is commenting)

The only problem is this. Bandicam - the screen recording tool - requires admin privileges to run. At 8, I don't think he is old enough yet to have local admin rights to his machine. (The combination of Avira and UAC have already saved his butt a few times.)

Does anyone know of a good way to bypass the UAC prompt from a non-admin account and launch the program automatically with admin rights, while leaving UAC intact for everything else?

Apparently the proper way to do this is with task scheduler, but the guides I find are old, and don't seem to work. My google searches turn up a program named UACPass which I have tried. It creates an icon on the admin accounts desktop, but once I move it to a location his user account can access, it doesn't seem to want to work from his non-admin account.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I might try next?

Much obliged,
Matt
 
The easy way to just not deal with all that is to custom install the application in a location that is not in C:/Program Files/ (or C:/Program Files (x86)/). Not being a Minecraft player, I don't know if this means you can just install Bandicam to C:/ or if you need to install Minecraft to C:/ but that is the basic idea.
 
evilsofa said:
The easy way to just not deal with all that is to custom install the application in a location that is not in C:/Program Files/ (or C:/Program Files (x86)/). Not being a Minecraft player, I don't know if this means you can just install Bandicam to C:/ or if you need to install Minecraft to C:/ but that is the basic idea.
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Applications installed into your Documents folder or ones that write only to Documents should not require a UAC prompt to run.
 
Well, I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that Bandicam needs admin rights because it somehow needs special access to the direct X output in order to be able to record the screen.

If this works though, rather than trying g to install them in a user folder, could I just try to change the permissions on the applications folder inside program files?
 
Why did task scheduler not work? There is an option in there "run as admin" that you can set for the task, then you just need a link to the task which you need to find in google as I haven't done it in a while (something like taskscheduler.exe "task name" put into a shortcut), then you should be good to go.

Changing permissions is probably not going to work, apps usually don't check permissions first, Windows actually asks for the admin according to the manifest file and just never runs the program if it says it requires admin and does not get it. You could maybe change permissions *and* modify the manifest file, but I'm not sure if it is usually signed in which case you'd be twarted. Or, as you said, if it requires special video access. Chances are, if it requires Admin every time it runs, it has a good reason.
 
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There's a UAC whitelist generator out there. I use it out in our warehouse so our shipping guys don't need to bug me when UPS Worldship needs to be updated.
 
Use a tool like CPAU or RUNASSPC - have a read of this thread - you've got a few options.
Grant admin rights on an application

There's a variety of tools that do similar things. I used one of them years ago on a project to create an encrypted executable that launched another program with elevated rights, passing various command line parameters. The username and password, plus the command line options were all encrypted into the executable, making is reasonably difficult for an average user to decode.
 
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