Is there a way to tell Windows 7 that a specific program is “safe” and not get an alert (do you want to let this program make changes to your computer?) every time it starts up? I don’t want to turn that feature off completely - I like Windows 7 telling me when a program is going to make changes to the computer - but I don’t want the pop-up box asking that every time I start to programs I run every day.
So - how can I turn the alerts off for specific programs only?
Thanks
I don’t think you can, I ran across this recently myself, and in my case, there was a command line option for the program (City of Heroes, oddly enough) that bypasses the part of it that was prompting the UAC.
You can! It’s just poorly documented online.
First, turn off the program from running at start-up, whether as a program preference option or removing it from the Startup folder in the Start menu.
Start Task Scheduler (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler).
Action > Create Task…
On the General tab, give it a name and check off “Run with highest privileges” at the bottom.
On the Triggers tab, click “New…” and select “At startup” from the “Begin the task options.”
On the Actions tab, click “New…,” the action should be set to “Start a program by default,” and browse to your program executable.
Done! Restart to confirm.
Oh, and if you want to be able to run that program without clicking “Okay” when it starts, but don’t actually want it to run at startup, don’t define a trigger, do define the same action, and then on the Settings tab click “Allow task to be run on command.”
Just realized there are also some time settings you should probably change in that Settings tab, things like “Stop the task if it runs for more than X days.”
Hope that helps!
Very cool! Thanks very much!
Maybe this is the place to ask: If I’m running Spybot’s Teatimer, do I really need to have UAC running? Do they essentially do the same thing?
Teatimer seems to catch most of the extreme stuff (E.g. registry changes), while the UAC thing catches programs that simply require access to OS configurations, it seems.
Also, as a geek I’m pretty good about not executing random e-mail attachments. I can’t remember I denied access when either of those alerts popped up.
Hmm. Must have messed up somehow. My program (everything.exe) didn’t start up when I restarted the computer. And the program that I tried to set up (a non-startup program) to not show the permission dialog still shows the permission dialog.
Hmmm. Do I have to turn the Task Manager on? Could it somehow not be running?
Huh, Everything is the same program I did this with.
Let me take some screen shots of my settings in a bit. Maybe I forgot to point something out.
Okay, I think I found the problem for running Everything at startup, and now I remember running into the exact same problem.
Programs run at startup can technically run before a user is actually logged in, but Windows won’t let something that requires administrative privileges run before the administrator is logged in, or at least in my case it won’t. I don’t have a password on my user account, so the option to run something at startup regardless of whether the user is logged in or not isn’t available to me.
On the Triggers tab, change the selection to “At log in,” and I think you have to set it to the administrator. Again, I’m not sure - without a password on the account it doesn’t allow some of these options.
Not sure why the on demand task isn’t working. Check the history in Task Scheduler for that task, it might shed some light.
I don’t actually use the “on demand” feature, so this took a bit to figure out. Basically, you need to write a batch file to run the task.
I think all the settings themselves I described above are okay, but you may have to change the “If the task is already running…” option on the Settings tab.
For example, even though I run run Everything as an administrator at log-on, and I can start a new instance of Everything from that one that is already running, if I try to run Everything.exe again I’ll get the UAC alert.
So, if I create an “on demand” profile for Everything.exe, and make a batch file (E.g. “Everything on Demand.bat”) with
schtasks /Run /tn <taskname>
or
schtasks /Run /tn Everything
in my case, when I execute the batch file, it’ll run a new instance of Everything.exe. If in the Settings options I don’t have “Run new instance in parallel” selected and I run the batch file again, it basically says the task is already running, so it doesn’t start a new one. If “Run new instance in parallel” is selected, it’ll run another new instance.
Have your eyes gone crossed yet?
Keep in mind, if you keep running the batch file, you’re essentially filling your notification area with new instances of Everything, whereas if you open the one that’s already running and go “Open new search window” or whatever, it doesn’t re-run the executable. I doubt this is what you’re trying to do, but just something to keep in mind. While figuring this out I at one point had about twenty Everything icons in my notification area. Whoops.
LOL! Thanks, I’ll keep playing with it.
In the meantime, I found a little program that is supposed to give you an “elevate” command on right click that sets the UAC to not send the alert for a specific program. It was written for Vista, and I couldn’t get it to work (I could run it and get the “Elevate” option in the right click panel but it didn’t seem to work.)
Someone surely has written a utility to do this? It has to be a much requested feature.
No idea. I think most people either put up with it or turn off UAC.
Anyway, let me know if you get it working, and what you did. At this point, this thread is the most comprehensive Task Scheduler tutorial on the Internet.