UAC provides an additional layer of security for the Operating system. It however is often viewed as a thorn in the side of users. They often seek to disable it or complain about it due to frustration and annoyment with the frequent prompts. Arellia Application Control Solution (ACS) can supress the User Account Control (UAC) helps prevent unauthorized changes to computers in your system, but they can also annoy users. You can use Application Control Solution to suppress UAC prompts for many common processes and programs . This will reduce the user frustration with UAC. UAC can then be left enabled to provide the additional security for new or unknown processes and programs.
Sometimes it is complicated to determine which process or program needs to be managed by ACS to prevent the UAC prompts. Hereafter are described two methods to help determine which process to have ACS act on.
Note: This information is also relevant to figuring out which process ACS needs to elevate permissions or privileges on.
Option 1
The first and often easiest method is to simply run but still have it provide an additional layer of security.
This document describes how you can determine which files need to be managed by ACS to suppress the UAC prompts:
- Check the UAC prompt details
- Search for “has image name”
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You can also use this information to determine which processes ACS needs to elevate privileges for. |
Check the UAC prompt details
Run the process or program to the point where the UAC prompt appears . In the lower left-hand corner is the "and then click the Show Details" link (or in this case the "Hide Details" link as Show Details was already clicked on). Select that and then in the . The details section in the top of the page will be expanded and show the file which that is attempting to be initiated and which is causing the UAC prompt [See the detail "Program location" surrounded by the Orange box in the image below.]. This is then almost always the file which needs start and need to be managed by ACS with an Application Initiation policy.
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The UAC dialog box that you see may vary from the example in the screenshot, but the basic layout is |
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the same with the Show/Hide details at the bottom left side, and the details in the upper middle section. |
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Search for "has image name"
If the UAC prompt page does not give enough information then a more extensive investigation may need to will be undertakennecessary.
- Increase the logging level on the client machine which has the ACS agent installed to 1f. See the Symantec KB if details are needed for client logging level. It may help to clear the log files on the client machine so that there are fewer to expedite the search in the next steps.
- Turn off the secure desktop.
- Download from Microsoft "Process Explorer" and run. Since the Secure and run the Process Explorer from Microsoft (for information on how to use the Process Explorer, go to the following heading Use Process Explorer). Because secure desktop is turned off, Process Explorer will be able to be accessed run behind the UAC prompts on your screen (just move drag the UAC dialog box to the side) and details on the processes can be viewed by right-clicking on .
- Right-click the process and selecting the Properties option. Then the Commnad line: may be seen on the Image tab.click Properties to view process details.
- Execute the process or program in question.
- Search for "has image name" in the ACS_.log files on the client machine. All the processes which that ACS is detecting will be listed there.
Keep track of the processes in a table if necessary, like the following:
Process name
PID
Parent PID
Start time
End time
- Search for "process start" in the ACS_.log files and put the PID in the table.
- Then search forwards and backwards for the PIDs in question and fill out the rest of the table. Note: If the process did not finish then there will be no end time. Just use the last entry time.
- Then evaluate the data in the table and see which process needs the Application Initiation policy or a standard Application Control policy with a Rights Action (maybe including the using the Users unrestricted token).
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To run Process Explorer, do the following steps:
- Run Process Explorer and by default it will show the hierarchy of the processes running on the computer.
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- Apply UAC to the parent process and
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- allow it to flow to child processes
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- Use Process Explorer to find out what process or process family runs a window or parts of a window.
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- Click and drag the icon on the menu bar
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- that looks
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- like a target
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- over
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- the item
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- that needs to be elevated
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- That process or its parent process would be the appropriate place to test elevating the process to
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- verify that it is the corrrect process.