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UAC is actually quite good for security in Windows, as it means that anything that could steal your dog and run away with your favourite pillow/boyfriend/girlfriend has to get your permission first. However, the annoying popup that asks me if I’m sure I trust CoH every time it launches has annoyed me since I upgraded to Windows 7. This is how to solve it for arbitrary applications:

Disclaimer

I am a geek. This is geek advice, fraught with assumptions of savvy and technological pitfalls that didn’t happen when I tried it. It assumes you know what you’re doing and that if following these instructions word for word does cause an explosion that destroys you, your computer and your favourite pillow that you will not track me down and take me to a haberdashers to be forced to replace it. Caveat lector.

Tech Background Bit

UAC has no such concept as a “whitelist” and doesn’t provide a mechanism for skipping the prompt, but it does allow you to schedule a task to run with elevated privileges that doesn’t ask permission (because a scheduled task that asks for permission every time it is run is as useful as a chocolate tea service). Martin Zugec came up with a proof-of-concept utility called “Elevator” that creates a scheduled task to be launched immediately with elevated privileges

The method of making it work

  1. Go to the webpage and download “SkipUAC.zip”
  2. Extract the contents somewhere non-temporary, like c:program filesSkipUAC
  3. In that directory, right click “Install” and click “Run as Administrator” (If you do not click “Run as Administrator” and instead just run it, it will look like it has worked, and the right click menu below will be there, but nothing will happen. RUN IT AS ADMINISTRATOR)
  4. Find your Application with the nifty blue and yellow quartered shield on it, right click on it, and select “Elevate Me”. This should work without prompting you. If not, please read the words in the bullet point above, read the text on the web page linked to above, or complain to someone on the internet.
  5. Copy your Application’s icon, in case this bit doesn’t work.
  6. Slightly complicated bit now. Right click on the Application icon and go to “Properties”, then in front of the command line, prefix it with the path to the place you put SkipUAC, and ElevatorRunner. So if your patcher icon reads: 

    "C:Program FilesGamesCity of Heroescohupdater.exe"

    it should now read: 

    "C:Program FilesSkipUACElevatorRunner.exe" "C:Program FilesGamesCity of Heroescohupdater.exe"

  7. The natty blue shield should be gone when you click “OK” (and it may have changed the icon to Elevator’s ugly pixelated thing, but you can fix that). Run it, and the application should launch without any permission boxes.
3 comments
  1. hi there,

    you still have a copy of the SkipUAC.zip? if you do, can pls email it to me. can’t find it on the page you linked.

  2. hello
    The original website / link is down, Skip UAC is not available any more… may I ask you whether you could it provide it to my email? thanks!

  3. Patches to Windows stopped Elevator working, and the developer’s moved on to other things, so it’s no longer available. Sorry!

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