Classic Shell: Forum

Of course, it should be an option, but there are those of us who really don't screw up our own computers by being full-time admins, and would really, really find it nice to be able to have the default case for anything started via Classic Shell be settable to run elevated.

For a long time - to this day in fact - I've always set EnableLUA in the registry to 0. This has been fine - I've not needed nor wanted Metro/Modern Apps at all, and with near 40 years software engineering experience I understand what I'm doing and don't need UAC. I PREFER to be a full-time admin. It saves me time.

But in testing Win 10 TP in a virtual machine I'm once again giving a "UAC enabled" setup a chance, and I find (as before) that it still gives niggling irritation. I've dragged the UAC slider all the way to the bottom to avoid prompts, but that still doesn't mean everything starts privileged as it should.

A very real example: Click Start, type notepad and hit enter, type a few characters, then try to save the file in the root directory of drive C:.

So...

How about it? Please consider adding a feature to Classic Shell that causes everything it starts to be run with requestedExecutionLevel at highestAvailable.

Thank you!

-Noel

I do not launch exes directly, I launch shortcuts. When you press Enter I run the default verb (usually Open). This is quite standard and I don't want to change it.

How about you mark the shortcut as requiring admin? You can't do that for Notepad because it is a system component, but you can do it for other text editors like Notepad++.

Yes, but you do offer right-click, Run As Administrator, right?

I'm only asking for an optional change. You could even make it a hidden option if you're concerned people will abuse it (e.g., a registry change).

Please think about it a bit more. You yourself just identified that there are cases where Windows doesn't allow things to be set that way by any other means.

-Noel

I don't implement the Run As Administrator. It is done by the shell when I ask for the context menu of the selected item. When you press Ctrl+Shift+Enter I run my own EXE as admin, which in turn activates the shortcut. I may or may not work. There is no way to know in advance. It can't be the default behavior when you press Enter. Is holding down Ctrl and Shift too much to ask?

>Is holding down Ctrl and Shift too much to ask?

Yes.

Oversimplifying the question into such black and white choices isn't really helpful. Clearly you created the product because you found the answer to the following question "yes":

Is using Windows without Classic Shell too much to ask?

The question I am trying to change the answer to is really this:

Is using Windows 8.1 / 10 with UAC enabled, turned to the lowest "never ask me" setting, too much to ask?

Right now, without the ability to pre-configure virtually everything to automatically start elevated, the answer is that it's unacceptable, because with EnableLUA set to 0 one does NOT have to hold down any special keys. Things just don't work and get you into corners you can't get out of (recalling my simple Notepad example above)

I have had ZERO problems running as a full-time administrator (EnableLUA set to 0), except that Metro/Modern Apps are unavailable (mostly I consider this a feature but I know I'm paddling against the current; most folks don't disable UAC like this). Why should I have to take on additional UAC tasks (such as choosing Run As Administrator or holding down keys) just to have the ability to run Metro/Modern Apps? Why should I suffer with the file system putting things in places that are NOT what I specified? UAC is a RIDICULOUS, POORLY IMPLEMENTED feature that I find impossible to live with.

I had simply thought an ability to Run everything As Administrator by default might tip the scales, making running Windows with UAC enabled marginally acceptable. I welcome alternative suggestions to the one I've made in this thread.

-Noel

Well, you are also oversimplifying the matter. The choice is not between "run as normal user" vs "run as admin". You seem to believe that it is Classic Shell that launches programs or documents. It does not. It tells the OS to execute verbs on shell items (same as when you right-click and select a menu item).

1) When you open a document you can choose between "open", "edit", "play", "open with", etc. With UAC disabled, all of those will run with high integrity level. With UAC enabled, there is no easy way to get the same behavior. All that Ctrl+Shift+Enter does is to run another process with high integrity level that in turn executes the default verb (the one that's bold). It is an overkill to use this as a default behavior, and I don't think it is even possible to do for all verbs.

2) For programs, the default verb is "open". Ctrl+Shift+Enter will try to execute the "runas" verb, which may or may not exist. What you are suggesting will force the Enter key to not execute the default verb, which is wrong.

3) For other menu items (like settings), running as admin will actually break things. For example search for "Change how the mouse pointer looks" and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. You will get an error message. As I said, there is no way to know in advance if this is going to work or not.

So first, I don't want to implement such feature because of #2 - it will break an assumption that click or Enter run the default verb, which existed since Windows 95. And second, it cannot be made to work reliably because of #1 and #3.

The only way to disable UAC is to disable UAC. You will lose the Metro apps in the process.

Okay, well, thanks for considering my request.

Disabling UAC is quite likely what I will continue to do once Win 10 comes out and if it is worthy of adoption (which is never certain any more). Even if you were able to find a way to start applications elevated, the file system and registry virtualization just sits in the background waiting to bite important parts of one's anatomy off when least expected. I don't know who at Microsoft thinks that building magic into the file and database systems so that things aren't really where you specify was a good idea, but they were not real operating system developers.

I think it's funny that Microsoft continues to arbitrarily require UAC to be enabled to run Metro/Modern Apps (and you can tell it's arbitrary because some of theirs aren't subject to the rule). I guess they're scared that they'll vet something into their App Store to find that later it contains undiscovered malware, and somehow be liable for the damages. The whole concept of Microsoft vetting things to be allowed into a walled garden goes against everything that made Windows successful.

-Noel