UAC control per program

[flint338]

Is there any way to have vista NOT ask for permission on a certain program? Namely atitool, which I want to run on boot, but it asks every time whether I want to start it or not.

yes.. I know I can disable UAC altogether.. I just want to disable it for this one program.

 

[General Crespin]

Try setting the program to run through Task Scheduler, at User Logon, and check the "Run with highest privileges" box. I had the same problem with EVEREST Ultimate, and that solved it for me.

 

[flint338]

you, sir, are a genius. thanks!

 

[Monkey God]

More Vista annoying "security".
Programs the user installs it wont let run on boot time, but theres a way around it, which defeats the purpose of security if it was malicious.

 

[JC634]

More Vista annoying "security".
Programs the user installs it wont let run on boot time, but theres a way around it, which defeats the purpose of security if it was malicious.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Malicious programs can program the OS to run itself(s) on startup. If a malicious program puts itself into a task, it believe it would be a very simple way to defeat it by deleting the task, hence there is probably not much (if any) malware written to put itself into the Task Scheduler.

Since there is a concious effort by the user required to use the Task Scheduler, I would assume MS must think you (the user) really wants to run this program.

FWIW, I have at least 3 programs that I run this way, including Everest.

 

[PornoSatan]

If joe-computer-user wants to see playboy-pics.exe, is UAC's confirmation going to stop him? No. Now that malware is free to do what it wants. If playboy-pics.exe somehow managed to get on joes system without him knowing, attempt to execute and UAC caught it, it could prove useful right? I dont think so, all that proves is that there's bigger problems to deal with.

It's not psychic. It doesnt know what I want to run, or what I dont want to run. I found it more annoying than anything, it was one of the first things I disabled.


JC634:
If a malicious program was capable of creating a task to run itself, then that program already has access to the system and copying itself as a task would be quite possibly the most dumb thing to do. There's an infinite amount of places it could modify/write to, to startup, that are much more unknown.

 

[Monkey God]

My point was this, why cant UAC simply ask if you want to allow a program to run when started up? It never asks, it just doesn't allow it, which is dumb because is trivial for malware to get around that anyways.

I wouldn't mind answering that.
Example:
you want to install a program
1) UAC: Do you want to run/install this program blahblah.exe? - YES
2) UAC: This program wants to run on system startup, is this ok? - YES

that would be fine. But it just doesn't run it, and although it gives you an icon TELLING you it didn't let it run, theres no obvious way to fix the issue, especially for non-technical people.

 

[JC634]

If a malicious program was capable of creating a task to run itself, then that program already has access to the system and copying itself as a task would be quite possibly the most dumb thing to do. There's an infinite amount of places it could modify/write to, to startup, that are much more unknown.

My point exactly. The Task Scheduler is the last place malware would want to reside.

 

[Demon10000]

My point was this, why cant UAC simply ask if you want to allow a program to run when started up? It never asks, it just doesn't allow it, which is dumb because is trivial for malware to get around that anyways.

I wouldn't mind answering that.
Example:
you want to install a program
1) UAC: Do you want to run/install this program blahblah.exe? - YES
2) UAC: This program wants to run on system startup, is this ok? - YES

that would be fine. But it just doesn't run it, and although it gives you an icon TELLING you it didn't let it run, theres no obvious way to fix the issue, especially for non-technical people.

I did some work for a lady who had a lot of spyware on her computer. I removed the spyware and she was very grateful that the spyware was gone. The performance increase was much more than she ever expected.

When she got home, she connected the computer back up and went about her business. Later that evening, I received a phone call telling me that her computer was slow. I had her bring it back to me, and too my surprise, all the spyware was back on her computer.

I removed it again and asked her to see if anything was missing. She immediately rattled off a few programs that I had removed as spyware. In the end, she dealt with a performance decrease to get use the software she wanted to use.

It's not necessarily the responsibility of the operating system to protect the user. If the user gets a message that asks if you want to install or run this application, they are probably going to say yes and not think about it. For them, this feature is a life saver. But to the rest of us, who understand that we can't just let everything run, it's more of an annoyance.

I have 3000 users on my network, and I can guarantee that 90% of them would click on a yes dialog box if they thought it would make the message go away, even if they had no clue what it was doing. By hiding, or making it less obvious, Vista makes it more less intrusive to the user, and takes away that chance of people clicking it just to make the message go away.

 

[flint338]

More Vista annoying "security".
Programs the user installs it wont let run on boot time, but theres a way around it, which defeats the purpose of security if it was malicious.

UAC is a good step, at least in the right direction. No, it's not perfect. This has been discussed a bazillion times, I did not mean for this thread to become a soapbox.

My question was answered in the 2nd post, much appriciated. Hope this answer helps anyone else that needs it.

Thread closed.