Determine which process needs elevation to prevent UAC prompts

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Last updated: Jan 04, 2016 by Max Pinion (Deactivated)
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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 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:

  1. Check the UAC prompt details
  2. Search for “has image name”

Note:

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 and then click the Show Details link. The details section in the top of the page will show the file that is attempting to start and need to be managed by ACS.

Note

The UAC dialog box that you see may vary from the example in the screenshot, but the basic layout is the same with the Show/Hide details at the bottom left side, and the details in the upper middle section.

Search for "has image name"

If the UAC prompt page does not give enough information then a more extensive investigation will be necessary. 

  1. Increase the logging level on the client machine which has the ACS agent installed to 1f. It may help to clear the log files on the client machine to expedite the search.
  2. Turn off the secure desktop.
  3. Download 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 run behind the UAC prompts on your screen (just drag the UAC dialog box to the side). 
  4. Right-click the process and click Properties to view process details.
  5. Execute the process or program in question.
  6. Search for "has image name" in the ACS_.log files on the client machine. All the processes that ACS is detecting will be listed there.

  7. Keep track of the processes in a table if necessary, like the following:

    Process name

    PID

    Parent PID

    Start time

    End time

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  8. Search for "process start" in the ACS_.log files and put the PID in the table.
  9. 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.
  10. 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).

Use Process Explorer

To run Process Explorer, do the following steps:

  1. Run Process Explorer and by default it will show the hierarchy of the processes running on the computer. 
  2. Apply UAC to the parent process and allow it to flow to child processes.
  3. Use Process Explorer to find out what process or process family runs a window or parts of a window. 
  4. Click and drag the icon on the menu bar that looks like a target over the item that needs to be elevated.
  5. That process or its parent process would be the appropriate place to test elevating the process to verify that it is the corrrect process.