Override detected UAC elevation requirement?

We all know Vista can detect that some applications need to be elevated to
work properly. City of Heroes and its updater are one such - Vista assumes
they'll be needing write access to the game folder in case of patches,
screenshots, or the game lock file (all of which go into the game folder, bad
coding I know but I can't do anything about that). The thing is, my City of
Heroes folder is on a drive and in a place and with settings so that anybody
can write to it, unrestricted. It shouldn't actually need administrative
privileges to run.

So is there any way I can tell Vista it's wrong, and not to run them as
administrator like it wants to?

With any luck, doing that will let me use custom keystroke assignments for
my mouse buttons without SetPoint also needing to run as an administrator
(which is a whole different kettle of suck).

The trouble with giving Vista some sort of user account security was always
going to be that because Windows never had it before, it would always be
horribly hacky. Unfortunately that prediction has turned out to be true.

MaW wrote:
> We all know Vista can detect that some applications need to be elevated to
> work properly. City of Heroes and its updater are one such - Vista assumes
> they'll be needing write access to the game folder in case of patches,
> screenshots, or the game lock file (all of which go into the game folder, bad
> coding I know but I can't do anything about that). The thing is, my City of
> Heroes folder is on a drive and in a place and with settings so that anybody
> can write to it, unrestricted. It shouldn't actually need administrative
> privileges to run.
>
> So is there any way I can tell Vista it's wrong, and not to run them as
> administrator like it wants to?

My guess is that the application is properly coded, and informs Vista
that it needs to be running as administrator in order to work correctly.

Alun Harford

probably by making a manifest that says what level it needs and placing it
next to the .exe.

guessing ...

make a text file with the following, and give it the same name as the .exe
but with .manifest appeneded (eg, "update.exe.manifest"), and place it next
to the .exe. now try runnig the .exe

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2">
<security>
<requestedPrivileges>
<requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"/>
</requestedPrivileges>
</security>
</trustInfo>
</assembly>

but if the .exe tells the system it needs admin, then the above won't help.

--

"MaW" <MaW@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F986737E-36E3-477B-B611-5B127306DB5C@microsoft.com...
> We all know Vista can detect that some applications need to be elevated to
> work properly. City of Heroes and its updater are one such - Vista assumes
> they'll be needing write access to the game folder in case of patches,
> screenshots, or the game lock file (all of which go into the game folder,
> bad
> coding I know but I can't do anything about that). The thing is, my City
> of
> Heroes folder is on a drive and in a place and with settings so that
> anybody
> can write to it, unrestricted. It shouldn't actually need administrative
> privileges to run.
>
> So is there any way I can tell Vista it's wrong, and not to run them as
> administrator like it wants to?
>
> With any luck, doing that will let me use custom keystroke assignments for
> my mouse buttons without SetPoint also needing to run as an administrator
> (which is a whole different kettle of suck).
>
> The trouble with giving Vista some sort of user account security was
> always
> going to be that because Windows never had it before, it would always be
> horribly hacky. Unfortunately that prediction has turned out to be true.