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Running a program with elevated privilages

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Subject Author Date
Running a program with elevated privilages tony houlihan 11-12-2007
Posted by tony houlihan on November 12, 2007, 9:59 am
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I understand that under windows 2000 the EPAL.exe program could be used to
run a program which required a higher level of privilages than that of the
logged in user but is this program usable under server 2003.

In addition to this does anyone know a better way of addressing this
situation:

company with 20 client computers and 20 users. A legacy application is
needed on all clients with all users using roaming profiles needing access
to the program. The legacy app requires the user to have Admin rights on
the first log in and lauch of the application (presumably to modify the
HKEY\Local Users\ somthing key registry section), obviously this presents a
headache for installation and administration..............

Help!!


Posted by Chris M on November 12, 2007, 10:55 am
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tony houlihan wrote:
> I understand that under windows 2000 the EPAL.exe program could be used
> to run a program which required a higher level of privilages than that
> of the logged in user but is this program usable under server 2003.
>
> In addition to this does anyone know a better way of addressing this
> situation:
>
> company with 20 client computers and 20 users. A legacy application is
> needed on all clients with all users using roaming profiles needing
> access to the program. The legacy app requires the user to have Admin
> rights on the first log in and lauch of the application (presumably to
> modify the HKEY\Local Users\ somthing key registry section), obviously
> this presents a headache for installation and administration..............

If I were you I'd find out what the program is trying to do that causes
it to fail as a normal user. If it's trying to add a registry key as you
have suggested, then you could perhaps push out the correct values via a
Group Policy instead of running the program elevated.

Perhaps the program needs to be able to write to some files in its
program folder, in which case you could relax filesystem permissions on
the particular files that it uses.

In my opinion, it's better to relax the security on a couple of files or
registry keys (depending on what they are, of course) than to run the
whole program with admin rights.

Regmon and Filemon are invaluable tools for these situations:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx


--
Chris.

Posted by tony houlihan on November 12, 2007, 3:50 pm
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Thanks for the reply,

part of the problem with this application is that we know it's only on the
first run of the application, we know that it needs to register an OCX on
first run but as for the registry..... I guess regmon will need to be used.

Thanks for the reply.

Tony
> tony houlihan wrote:
>> I understand that under windows 2000 the EPAL.exe program could be used
>> to run a program which required a higher level of privilages than that of
>> the logged in user but is this program usable under server 2003.
>>
>> In addition to this does anyone know a better way of addressing this
>> situation:
>>
>> company with 20 client computers and 20 users. A legacy application is
>> needed on all clients with all users using roaming profiles needing
>> access to the program. The legacy app requires the user to have Admin
>> rights on the first log in and lauch of the application (presumably to
>> modify the HKEY\Local Users\ somthing key registry section), obviously
>> this presents a headache for installation and
>> administration..............
>
> If I were you I'd find out what the program is trying to do that causes it
> to fail as a normal user. If it's trying to add a registry key as you have
> suggested, then you could perhaps push out the correct values via a Group
> Policy instead of running the program elevated.
>
> Perhaps the program needs to be able to write to some files in its program
> folder, in which case you could relax filesystem permissions on the
> particular files that it uses.
>
> In my opinion, it's better to relax the security on a couple of files or
> registry keys (depending on what they are, of course) than to run the
> whole program with admin rights.
>
> Regmon and Filemon are invaluable tools for these situations:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
>
>
> --
> Chris.


Posted by Anthony on November 12, 2007, 3:59 pm
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You just need to create an msi package for it, using a packaging tool. Then
you can keep admin rights restricted. Or you could use a script or a
deployment tool to run the setup.
Anthony, http://www.airdesk.co.uk


> Thanks for the reply,
>
> part of the problem with this application is that we know it's only on the
> first run of the application, we know that it needs to register an OCX on
> first run but as for the registry..... I guess regmon will need to be
> used.
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> Tony
>> tony houlihan wrote:
>>> I understand that under windows 2000 the EPAL.exe program could be used
>>> to run a program which required a higher level of privilages than that
>>> of the logged in user but is this program usable under server 2003.
>>>
>>> In addition to this does anyone know a better way of addressing this
>>> situation:
>>>
>>> company with 20 client computers and 20 users. A legacy application is
>>> needed on all clients with all users using roaming profiles needing
>>> access to the program. The legacy app requires the user to have Admin
>>> rights on the first log in and lauch of the application (presumably to
>>> modify the HKEY\Local Users\ somthing key registry section), obviously
>>> this presents a headache for installation and
>>> administration..............
>>
>> If I were you I'd find out what the program is trying to do that causes
>> it to fail as a normal user. If it's trying to add a registry key as you
>> have suggested, then you could perhaps push out the correct values via a
>> Group Policy instead of running the program elevated.
>>
>> Perhaps the program needs to be able to write to some files in its
>> program folder, in which case you could relax filesystem permissions on
>> the particular files that it uses.
>>
>> In my opinion, it's better to relax the security on a couple of files or
>> registry keys (depending on what they are, of course) than to run the
>> whole program with admin rights.
>>
>> Regmon and Filemon are invaluable tools for these situations:
>>
>> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
>>
>>
>> --
>> Chris.
>



Posted by tony houlihan on November 13, 2007, 8:54 am
Please log in for more thread options
Thanks for the post anthony however the installation is not really the
problem it's running the program for the first time that creates an issue as
admin rights appear to be needed to create registry entries and register an
OCX. Again for only 20 users not really a problem but they are using full
roaming profiles and the client was all users to be setup with the
application on all computers! 20 x 20 = 400 logons.... not really something
I fancy doing!
> You just need to create an msi package for it, using a packaging tool.
> Then you can keep admin rights restricted. Or you could use a script or a
> deployment tool to run the setup.
> Anthony, http://www.airdesk.co.uk
>
>
>> Thanks for the reply,
>>
>> part of the problem with this application is that we know it's only on
>> the first run of the application, we know that it needs to register an
>> OCX on first run but as for the registry..... I guess regmon will need to
>> be used.
>>
>> Thanks for the reply.
>>
>> Tony
>>> tony houlihan wrote:
>>>> I understand that under windows 2000 the EPAL.exe program could be used
>>>> to run a program which required a higher level of privilages than that
>>>> of the logged in user but is this program usable under server 2003.
>>>>
>>>> In addition to this does anyone know a better way of addressing this
>>>> situation:
>>>>
>>>> company with 20 client computers and 20 users. A legacy application is
>>>> needed on all clients with all users using roaming profiles needing
>>>> access to the program. The legacy app requires the user to have Admin
>>>> rights on the first log in and lauch of the application (presumably to
>>>> modify the HKEY\Local Users\ somthing key registry section), obviously
>>>> this presents a headache for installation and
>>>> administration..............
>>>
>>> If I were you I'd find out what the program is trying to do that causes
>>> it to fail as a normal user. If it's trying to add a registry key as you
>>> have suggested, then you could perhaps push out the correct values via a
>>> Group Policy instead of running the program elevated.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the program needs to be able to write to some files in its
>>> program folder, in which case you could relax filesystem permissions on
>>> the particular files that it uses.
>>>
>>> In my opinion, it's better to relax the security on a couple of files or
>>> registry keys (depending on what they are, of course) than to run the
>>> whole program with admin rights.
>>>
>>> Regmon and Filemon are invaluable tools for these situations:
>>>
>>> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Chris.
>>
>
>


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