limited use of Admin security context - is it possible?

[davexnet]

On my Vista box, I'm the ADMIN, while my son is a standard user.

He has one game he plays that must run as administrator.
It only works if you right-click the icon and select "run as administrator".
At which point, he can enter my credentials.
(If you just double click the icon, the window opens up, but the "start" button doesn't
activate. The game is FIFA 2 Online)

Because of this, I just leave my password blank, allowing my son to start his game
without having to type in a password.

As far as I'm concerned, my son can do anything he likes on his logon
as long as he stays in the standard user security context. In other words,
I don't want him running anything in the Admin security context except for that one
game.

Is it possible to do? I've been reading up on UAC, but so far, I haven't
seen what I'm looking for.

 

[ViRGE]

On my Vista box, I'm the ADMIN, while my son is a standard user.

He has one game he plays that must run as administrator.
It only works if you right-click the icon and select "run as administrator".
At which point, he can enter my credentials.
(If you just double click the icon, the window opens up, but the "start" button doesn't
activate. The game is FIFA 2 Online)

Because of this, I just leave my password blank, allowing my son to start his game
without having to type in a password.

As far as I'm concerned, my son can do anything he likes on his logon
as long as he stays in the standard user security context. In other words,
I don't want him running anything in the Admin security context except for that one
game.

Is it possible to do? I've been reading up on UAC, but so far, I haven't
seen what I'm looking for.

There's nothing built into Windows that will really meet your needs. The hackish solution is to setup a shortcut using RunAs, and put your password in the shortcut. Depending on how smart your son is, this may be enough.

 

[Nothinman]

You need to figure out why that game requires admin rights and attempt to fix it. e.g. if it writes to it's install directory, give him permission to it, etc.

 

[davexnet]

You need to figure out why that game requires admin rights and attempt to fix it. e.g. if it writes to it's install directory, give him permission to it, etc.

I hear what you are saying. On the games forum it is documented in the FAQ
that it does need Admin rights. I don't know the technical reason.

I guess I could open an account on the games forum and ask - it may turn out that
the game actually does something that really requires Admin rights. At his point the
question is academic because I have to deal with the way it is right now.

I've tried runas but it's not working unfortunately. I get a terse message from the gameloader
saying something about not finding the language pack.

In Vista Ultimate theere is an operand of runas : /savecred which will remember the password once
it is entered for the first time. This would have been perfect except for the above show stopper.

If I find anything else of interest I'll post back. Thanks for the feedback.
Dave

 

[Nothinman]

I meant figuring it out yourself by running something like procmon and seeing what files and registry access it makes and trying to fix any of them that give access denied errors.

 

[davexnet]

I meant figuring it out yourself by running something like procmon and seeing what files and registry access it makes and trying to fix any of them that give access denied errors.

I see what you mean. Somebody told me they had a similar experience with AutoGK,
a simple video encoding tool. I may see if I can recreate the problem with that,
use that to learn the tools and what to look for. Thanks, it's a place to start,
particularly since my post in the game forum didn't get any responses yet.

 

[Nothinman]

I see what you mean. Somebody told me they had a similar experience with AutoGK,
a simple video encoding tool. I may see if I can recreate the problem with that,
use that to learn the tools and what to look for. Thanks, it's a place to start,
particularly since my post in the game forum didn't get any responses yet.

Oh yea, lots of Windows apps are very poorly designed and Vista/Win7 highlighted them quite vibrantly.