blog: UAC survival guide

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/14Feb10-surviving-UAC.htm

[namsupo]

Isn't it a bit pathetic that xplorer2 doesn't support UAC natively? It's not that difficult...

[Tuxman]

There are also sudo for Windows and MachMichAdmin (German).

[nikos]

so namsupo how exactly would you want xplorer2 to behave? You can always run as administrator and forget about UAC altogether

[namsupo]

By supporting UAC properly - prompting for elevation when needed, and not requiring the user to run the whole program elevated.

[nikos]

perhaps you don't understand what this would entail, no less than a complete rewrite of the program

the latest version has this Window > Administrator command which you can use 'momentarily' then get back to your normal window

or alternatively, use drag drop as i say in the article which elevates just when necessary for a single move or copy

[Thracx]

perhaps you don't understand what this would entail, no less than a complete rewrite of the program...

Ouch.. That's slightly depressing to me, as this issue is probably the main reason why I can no longer recommend X² to my friends.


I have to open vanilla Explorer frequently now - I've become quite accustomed to the 'oh crap, I can't do that properly in X²... Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+E, Tab Tab Ctrl+V Enter, <do action>, Alt+F4, <resume using X²>'.  I'm not sure what's more sad - that I have to use Explorer all the time, or the fact that I can recite that keystroke chain by memory...

[nikos]

what can't you do properly? did you watch the demo video?

in the end of the day it is only a handful of folders that is affected

[Rainer57]

in German Translation I miss the menu Fenster -> Administrator!
In English Language the menu Window -> Administrator is OK.
Can you correct this?

Rainer

[Thracx]

what can't you do properly? did you watch the demo video?...

Sorry, I didn't watch the video, but I understood what I needed to from namsupo's second post and your response saying that UAC support simply doesn't exist natively in X², and isn't coming anytime soon.

The "tricks" don't work in the sense that the reason I use X² is because it has xyz functionality.  If I wanted to use Explorer's copy instead of Robust copy all the time, then well I'd be using Explorer instead of X²  I've loved the Robust Paste (F5) feature for quite some time now, but am probably going to have to turn it off because it doesn't prompt for elevation (and doesn't auto-rename on source==destination transfers).  The 'rename' workaround wouldn't be too shabby if X² didn't have it's own top-level ContextMenu (I don't recall seeing an option to disable this?).

...in the end of the day it is only a handful of folders that is affected

I use permissions extensively throughout my computers, so unfortunately it affects me all the time.

Examples - my Media server only grants read-only access so nothing can edit or add files, which is a needed safeguard from misc programs like WMP from making changes without my direct permission, etc.  I still have a few old MP3s that I personally extracted & tagged myself, but have since gotten malformed ID3 tags and I don't know why or from where.
Another example, my sensitive data is also protected by permissions to guard against potential malware issues, including the most common malware - human error .  If I get a prompt, I know to take a moment to think and make sure I know what I'm doing..

There were many long standing problems with WinXP's default permission schema, and honestly, UAC is a superb compromise between full-access without safeguards (WinXP default) vs full-security (multi-account).

[nikos]

so you don't want to use drag-drop in xplorer2 and you open windows explorer to do... drag-drop? I just don't get your argument!

as you trust xplorer2 you can use it in full administrator mode all the time, and problems are gone

just be careful what programs you start with it, especially what you download

[Thracx]

so you don't want to use drag-drop in xplorer2 and you open windows explorer to do... drag-drop? I just don't get your argument!

My argument (I'd say more of my stated opinion, wasn't really an argument) was about using keyboard shortcuts, not mouse stuff like drag-drop (above where I made the joke that I knew that long keystroke chain by memory...).  I try to avoid the mouse as much as possible.

...as you trust xplorer2 you can use it in full administrator mode all the time, and problems are gone

Oh I trust X² fine, per above it's about preventing mistakes.  Running as full-rights all the time begs for human error, not program errors.


I've since turned off the always Robust-copy option in X², and while it's sad to see it go, I don't have to use vanilla Explore nearly as much anymore.  Speaking of which, do you happen to know why the Win7 copy dialog is so slow?  It seems to take at least twice as long as X²'s robust copy!

[nikos]

i bet windows copy (drag-drop style) must be doing many more checks for extreme conditions that never occur...

[Serioga]

so you don't want to use drag-drop in xplorer2 and you open windows explorer to do... drag-drop? I just don't get your argument!

I feel that Thracx mentioned following annoyance: a) you firstly try to make some operation in protected folder b) you get error message from xplorer c) you retry the operation in other way with elevated privileges.

But Windows Explorer has no such problem so this behavior annoys more hardly...

[victor50]

In reply to your answer by mail: I would like to run X2 in elevated mode in W10 P 64 (same problem in 32). However, as stated in my mail all my shares disappear so thats pretty useless. I tried to fiddle with all kinds of "trusted locations" and "security settings" to no avail. UAC is on lowest possible position save registry hack.