18 replies to this topic

[Normandie]

22 January 2008

Hope someone can help. I just had to change computers and of course now have Vista, please no arguments about whether vista is good or bad I can't change the OS, well in the change I installed the latest CCleaner and I right clicked on the file and chose "run as administrator" but each time I click on the icon to run CCleaner UAC kicks in and asks if I am sure, is there any way around this without disabling UAC?

Please forgive me if my spelling is bad, English is not my first language.

Thank you & have a good day,
Normandie

[JunkBuster]

Normandie, on Jan 22 2008, 12:34 PM, said:

22 January 2008

Hope someone can help. I just had to change computers and of course now have Vista, please no arguments about whether vista is good or bad I can't change the OS, well in the change I installed the latest CCleaner and I right clicked on the file and chose "run as administrator" but each time I click on the icon to run CCleaner UAC kicks in and asks if I am sure, is there any way around this without disabling UAC?

Please forgive me if my spelling is bad, English is not my first language.

Thank you & have a good day,
Normandie

Sure:

Turn off Vista UAC

1. Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.
2. Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find "Disable UAP" (this should probably change to UAC in next Vista beta builds and in the RTM version). Click on that line.

3. Press the Launch button.
4. A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.
5. Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

[Normandie]

JunkBuster, on Jan 23 2008, 08:52 AM, said:

Sure:

Turn off Vista UAC

1. Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.
2. Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find "Disable UAP" (this should probably change to UAC in next Vista beta builds and in the RTM version). Click on that line.

3. Press the Launch button.
4. A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.
5. Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

JunkBuster,

Thanks for the advice to disable UAC, but I really want to leave that active. What I do not understand is why all the other programs I have do not trip UAC and CCleaner is the only one that does. I had hoped there was a way to adjust or change CCleaner so that this would not happen.

Have a good day,
Normandie

[Caldor]

Turning off UAC is a very bad idea. One of Vista's significant strengths over the old Windows OS's is not having users run as admin by default. This is one of the key reasons why Vista has less security problems than previous Windows OS's, as well as Mac OS X.

CCleaner is an administrative tool, that performs administrative functions, and as such requires administrative credentials.

MS bred a generation of users with poor computer use habits but atleast now they have changed their ways. Its time for users to adapt.

[CTskifreak]

If you are new(er) to computers, and you have Vista, then yes, leave UAC on. However, for the power users who know the ins-and-outs of safe computing, you can safely disable UAC. Maximum PC recommends it if you consider yourself to know enough of safety and keeping your system maintained. (They have a bunch of other tweaks in their January issue)

As for CCleaner, I am not sure exactly why it trips the UAC. Caldor's response above is the closest and most likely I can give you.

AJ

[Caldor]

UAC cannot be "safely" disabled. Regardless of a users self appointed geekness, the only true way to tell what a program is doing is to dissasemble it. Since thats inpractical the best option is to run firstly programs you trust, and secondly to run your session in a least priveldged mode so that if someone unexpected is in the code it cant do any harm.

Exploiting a power users ego and getting a trojan or whatever type of malware onto their system that way is a time honoured attack vector by black hats. If you get an unexpected UAC prompt thats a clear and practical signal something needs investigating.

[Guest_Jim_*]

Not positive but I think I know how to fix this issue with the UAC without turning it off. By setting a program to run as administrator, which I'm pretty sure bypasses the UAC, it is added to a list of programs that can bypass it. At least, that's what you'd think. What I have observed is that the program isn't added to the list, the publisher is. I haven't had the UAC on for some time, though I probably can turn it back on, but I'm pretty sure programs like Firefox only asked about permission once whereas another program I use asked every time I ran it. The only difference between the two that I could find in Windows was that Firefox has Mozilla as its publisher but the other program didn't. Maybe the UAC requires the name of the publisher to remember or to verify what can and can't run unchecked. CCleaner doesn't give the name of the publisher. Maybe by adding that information the problem will be solved.

[Normandie]

Thanks to all and even though I consider myself a power user, I agree with Caldor about leaving UAC on. I feel it is another safe guard from something sneaking in. I guess I will just have to get use to the fact that it is going to ask each time for permission, small price to pay for a little more security.

Thanks again & have a good day to all,
Normandie

[Anderow]

Normandie, on Jan 24 2008, 05:29 AM, said:

Thanks to all and even though I consider myself a power user, I agree with Caldor about leaving UAC on. I feel it is another safe guard from something sneaking in. I guess I will just have to get use to the fact that it is going to ask each time for permission, small price to pay for a little more security.

Thanks again & have a good day to all,
Normandie

Try Tweak UAC:

http://www.tweak-uac.com/

This enables you to set UAC to a low level so that you will not receive Administrator promts.

[Normandie]

Anderow, on Jan 24 2008, 09:28 AM, said:

Try Tweak UAC:

http://www.tweak-uac.com/

This enables you to set UAC to a low level so that you will not receive Administrator promts.

Anderow,

Thanks for that, I downloaded it and ran it, and all seem to work fine, the only thing I see is that even if I pick "quiet" Windows shows the little security warning saying that the UAC is "deactivated". I looked around on the site of the author of the little program but did not find any information as to this warning.

Thanks again,
Normandie

P.S. I just noticed that you joined today, thanks for taking an interest and welcome to the forum!

[glatzfront]

Caldor, on Jan 23 2008, 07:37 PM, said:

Turning off UAC is a very bad idea. One of Vista's significant strengths over the old Windows OS's is not having users run as admin by default. This is one of the key reasons why Vista has less security problems than previous Windows OS's, as well as Mac OS X.

CCleaner is an administrative tool, that performs administrative functions, and as such requires administrative credentials.

MS bred a generation of users with poor computer use habits but atleast now they have changed their ways. Its time for users to adapt.

Sorry but I have to take exception with you on this. UAC is for people that don't know how to use and protect their computer, if the did they wouldn't have security problems. I think that constantly running into "Administrative privilege" is an unnecessary frustration and a definite short comming of Linux and others that are "better protected".

[Caldor]

glatxfront if you think about it logically, every time you perform a function on your computer you are trusting who wrote the program to do what you think it does, and nothing more. Since it is impractical to dissamble all programs you run where you dont have total trust the function is ok, or indeed in a worse case if a third party has modified it to contain malware without your knowledge, the most practical way to go is to operare in a lest priveledged mode. If something unexpected trips up, it can then be looked at in more detail. This is the cornerstone of basic computing security and one of the key reasons why Vista security is far better than XP.

[Guest_Jim_*]

Caldor, wouldn't it be logical to trust most software programs, as it is their job to write programs? One would think that they wouldn't want anything bad to happen because of their program and would probably do things to keep third parties from making that possible.
I would just like to say that I do trust that no third party has added malware to the programs I have, partially because I'm not that paranoid. Besides, how much software do we have on each of our computers that comes from a source we don't trust? If there is some software from somewhere we don't trust, then ask yourself why you even have it. Also, think about it this way, what about programs that need the administrative permissions to run period, with or without malware? You'd either have to risk harming your system to run them or allow them to do what they are suppose to do.
If you know what you are doing then the UAC shouldn't be needed, and as it still has bugs (such as not remembering which programs it can let by all the time) is it worth having on all the time? The are supposed to be changes to it in SP1 so maybe that will fix it.
Finally, shouldn't this debate about the UAC be moved elsewhere, like the Windows Security forum? It really hasn't got much to do with CCleaner any way, aside from it being affected.

[Caldor]

Jim, yes I agree it would be nice if programs could be easily and practically protected from third party modification. However the reality is they are routinely modified - have a look at the crack scene for example. Its difficult to not have programs modified. The best way IMHO is to use something like an MD5 hash sum to compare if there is real doubt about it being modified.

There is very good reason why decades of computer platforms have operated in least priveledged mode. Real security involves looking beyond the ego and ignorances of so called power users.

UAC is not bugged. Not remembering previous admin credentials is a purposely designed feature, just like in UNIX. I am part of the SP1 beta program on connect and SP1 does not change this.

[Guest_Jim_*]

How is it not a bug that some programs you tell the UAC to grant administrative permissions keep them from session to session and others don't when you do the same thing? The same actions shouldn't give different results with a computer, provided nothing has been changed.
I'd say we all have issues here with our egos and ignorances of being a power user, including you Caldor. I haven't had the UAC on for months and I have had no ill effects from it. I may very well just be lucky, or I may be intelligent to avoid and circumvent problems, and only one who knows more than me about computers and knows what I've been doing can judge that.
Would someone please move this thread to another forum, I generally don't think an argument about the UAC belongs in the CCleaner forum. Somebody may actually try to use this to fix a problem with CCleaner and the UAC, and right now nothing is being said that would help them.

[paulgj]

Normandie, on Jan 22 2008, 08:34 AM, said:

22 January 2008

Hope someone can help. I just had to change computers and of course now have Vista, please no arguments about whether vista is good or bad I can't change the OS, well in the change I installed the latest CCleaner and I right clicked on the file and chose "run as administrator" but each time I click on the icon to run CCleaner UAC kicks in and asks if I am sure, is there any way around this without disabling UAC?

Please forgive me if my spelling is bad, English is not my first language.

Thank you & have a good day,
Normandie

This is what worked for me.

Hope this helps.

[marmite]

[on topic]

Haven't used Vista for ages, but can't you set a shortcut to CCleaner and stipulate on the Properties / Security (?) tab that you want to run with Admin credentials?

[off topic]

Vista's UAC principles are perfectly sound. It's implementation is a pain in the *ss at times. At the end of the day the environment on YOUR computer is much safer because of it. It has nothing to do with how experienced a user you are.

Vista as an OS has been a disaster for MS - I understand things have improved in W7 in UAC usability terms.

Principle of least privilege ... http://en.wikipedia....least_privilege

And a worthwhile read ... http://msdn.microsof...y/aa480194.aspx (Longhorn = Vista / 2008 server)

[marmite]

There's also this ... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc...1(PROT.13).aspx ... which I understand leaves UAC on (some security protection from malware etc) but, if set to 0, disables the prompt.

See also ... http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?...tbehavioradmin/.

[marmite]

Sheesh just realised this is a really old thread resurrected ... only noticed when I saw 4649 views!