Windows 10 UAC

[laugher]

Running CCleaner Professional. I login to my non-administrator account for work daily. I do have access to my admin account but as a best practise, I do not login to the admin account.

UAC pops up everytime I login to my Windows 10 desktop. Twice. Each time, I just provide it with my non-admin user. No error dialogs appear after this so I assume it is happy with my normal privileges.

I have tried to enable the "Skip User Account Control warning" setting under Advanced but it always denies me under my normal user login. Under my admin login, the setting is enabled and I do not see the UAC appear.

Seeing as a number of antivirus, PC tuneup utilities (including AVG TuneUp) does not prompt me for UAC authentication/authorization, I assume CCleaner Pro just handles this differently and with more pain for the end user.

Is there a way I can disable these UAC prompts as a normal user? Again, if it wasn't clear to begin with, I do not intend to login to my admin account as per best practise and IT organizational policies.

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by laugher
spellcheck

[nukecad]

Interesting one.

I assume that CCleaner was installed with your Admin account, and so that is why it's skipping the UAC if you are logged in as Admin. (as it should if you've ticked that in settings).

But that when you try to run CCleaner with the non-Admin account then you are not the 'owner' of the installed CCleaner and so Windows shows you the UAC pop-up.

When you ticked 'Skip UAC' in the settings which account were you using?
It may only take effect for the current user account?

Being CCleaner Pro you can clean all accounts from the Admin profile, but that isn't really what you are looking for.

I'm not entirely sure if this will work but think that as a first step I would try giving the non-admin account full owner permissions to ccleaner.exe and ccleaner64.exe
Right click on them in File Explorer and select Properties>Security> and edit the permissions.

I'd then untick Skip UAC in CCleaner and close it, (reboot?), open CC again and retick Skip UAC.

There are apps/registry hacks out there which can add a 'take ownership' option to your context menu, see this article.
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/
(Hint - It's a bit long winded to do manually, so scroll to the bottom and use one of the 'Hacks' which will do it for you).

I'll flag this topic up to the staff to ask the developers to take a look at it.

[laugher]

10 hours ago, nukecad said:

I assume that CCleaner was installed with your Admin account, and so that is why it's skipping the UAC if you are logged in as Admin. (as it should if you've ticked that in settings).

Correct. I can't remember if I had tried but I don't think CCleaner installed correctly unless I use my admin privileges.

10 hours ago, nukecad said:

When you ticked 'Skip UAC' in the settings which account were you using?

It may only take effect for the current user account?

Being CCleaner Pro you can clean all accounts from the Admin profile, but that isn't really what you are looking for.

CCleaner would not let me change the "Skip User Account Control warning" so I've never been able to enable it to see if it would work. If this is a registry setting, let me know where the setting is stored so I can try manually changing it via regedit.exe. Unless its in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree in which case I might have problems getting to it as admin.

I don't login to my admin account often. The only times I use the admin account is for the installation of software. However, software is usually installed as my normal user account and any privilege escalation required for the installation is authorized via the UAC.

11 hours ago, nukecad said:

I'm not entirely sure if this will work but think that as a first step I would try giving the non-admin account full owner permissions to ccleaner.exe and ccleaner64.exe

Right click on them in File Explorer and select Properties>Security> and edit the permissions.

I'd then untick Skip UAC in CCleaner and close it, (reboot?), open CC again and retick Skip UAC.

There are apps/registry hacks out there which can add a 'take ownership' option to your context menu, see this article.
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/
(Hint - It's a bit long winded to do manually, so scroll to the bottom and use one of the 'Hacks' which will do it for you).

I know what you're suggesting but...I've had all sorts of complications in the past when I take ownership of files and I don't really want to end up with an unsupported installation of CCleaner because I hacked it to work.

11 hours ago, nukecad said:

I'll flag this topic up to the staff to ask the developers to take a look at it.

Yes please. I am assuming Piriform will want if they haven't already, get this working in a corporate environment where there is absolutely no way a normal user would be given an admin account. I understand we can re-package CCleaner via a new MSI or MST in a way that will push these settings through but in a small or medium sized business where Active Directory and/or GPOs are not in use, there must be a way to support this.

You can consider me as a "privileged" dev/sys engineer in a small company.

Cheers.

[nukecad]

8 hours ago, laugher said:

 get this working in a corporate environment where there is absolutely no way a normal user would be given an admin account. I understand we can re-package CCleaner via a new MSI or MST in a way that will push these settings through but in a small or medium sized business where Active Directory and/or GPOs are not in use, there must be a way to support this.

You can consider me as a "privileged" dev/sys engineer in a small company.

Cheers.

You hadn't said that this was business use 'in a corporate environment' or 'a small company', I was under the impression that it was CCleaner Pro for home use.

Are you using the standard CCleaner Pro or are you using one of the  Business editions?
Do you have multiple endpoints?

There are 4 versions of CCleaner for business use, depending on the size of your company and just what you require - Network, Business, Cloud, & Technician.
Scroll down this page to see a comparision of the features of each:
https://www.ccleaner.com/business/ccleaner-business-edition

 

[laugher]

@nukecad Just using the standard CCleaner Pro. The company wouldn't fund this themselves so I'm doing it for my own sanity.

 

[nukecad]

Whilst I understand your frustration. - Using the standard product (Free or Pro) in a business environment is in contravention of the Terms of Use.

You should stop using a home edition CCleaner at your workplace.

Additionally, many/most companies will prohibit the installation of any software that has not been approved by the IT department.
It is usually a disciplinary (or even sackable) condition of an employees contract.

I suggest that you talk to your IT department (or your manager) about the benefits of having a CCleaner business licence.

https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/faq/general/is-it-ok-to-use-ccleaner-in-my-business-or-to-provide-services-to-other-companies

https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019994232

 

Quote

 

Can I use CCleaner Professional at work?

No, CCleaner Professional is a paid product for home use only.

We offer different business versions of CCleaner that are suitable for all scale of businesses, as well as independent technicians and service providers.

Our business versions are CCleaner Business, CCleaner Network, CCleaner Cloud, and CCleaner Technician.

 

 

[laugher]

@nukecad Ok. I've confused you and I am probably partly to blame for it because I was having a dig at the client I was talking to at the time.

What I meant to say is that I'm just an independent contractor working for a company who won't have the investments necessary to beef up on tools such as CCleaner. I use CCleaner Pro on my own personally funded PC which I occasionally take to work. So no, I'm not breaching any of the IT policies currently in place otherwise, agree, they would just walk me out the door for installing a piece of software not authorized in their environment. The CCleaner Pro license is installed on a personal computer personally owned by me. Just like you or others might sometimes do some work on your home PC, this is what I do as well.

So backtracking a bit, what options do I have to get this issue fixed?

[nukecad]

Backtracking, then the suggestions I gave above in my first reply.

Or install CCleaner on the user account rather than the Admin account.

Just to be clear is this a 'normal' Admin account, - or the, usually inactive (hidden), elevated MS Administrator account?
(The elevated MS Administrator never shows a UAC warning, but it's not something that should be enabled in normal use).

TBH you may just have to live with the UAC popping up and having to click OK to it.

Sometimes it's just one of those things you have to put up with, after all MS put UAC there for your protection.
I have Malwarebytes Free to run a weekly threat scan - That's even stranger; it doesn't show the UAC when launched, but does throw up the UAC when you quit from MB.

[laugher]

On 23/04/2020 at 21:54, nukecad said:

Or install CCleaner on the user account rather than the Admin account.

I did. It prompted for admin privileges during the install so I had to select my admin account in the UAC prompt during install. Unless you are saying the installation will work fine under a non-admin user account context?

On 23/04/2020 at 21:54, nukecad said:

Just to be clear is this a 'normal' Admin account, - or the, usually inactive (hidden), elevated MS Administrator account?

(The elevated MS Administrator never shows a UAC warning, but it's not something that should be enabled in normal use).

Its not the hidden MS Admin account. It is my Microsoft account with admin privileges which I don't use. I originally setup Windows using my Microsoft account because from memory, when I first installed Windows 10, Microsoft needs my Microsoft account to setup Windows 10. So I decided, in keeping with best practice, I create a non-admin account and use that going forward. As far as I can remember, my non-admin account is not associated with any Microsoft account. Its just a Windows 10 installation not integrated to any Active Directory and my day-to-day account is just a local normal user account.

When UAC asks for elevated permissions such as admin rights, I select my Microsoft account which is a member of the local Administrator group.

On 23/04/2020 at 21:54, nukecad said:

Sometimes it's just one of those things you have to put up with, after all MS put UAC there for your protection.

I get why UAC is there. I just think to clean my local non-admin user junk files/browser cache, etc., it should be modified to;

1. Not touch things it isn't privileged for - I can't imagine cleaning my junk files, temp directories, browser cache, etc would need escalated privileges anyway because there are tools out there that does exactly that (CCleaner Pro competitors) and the browser's built-in clear all cache/history function also doesn't trigger a UAC prompt.
2. When it does find something it doesn't have rights for, it should skip it, report it or both (as an option).

The user experience would be much more pleasant that way.

[laugher]

@nukecad - have decided against "hacking" the installation to work for me. If anything, it will only over-complicate things as I will have a non-standardized installation of CCleaner Pro.

I've also tried to live with using the UAC each day as CCleaner Pro is tasked with a cleanup on machine startup. As there are two UAC prompts each time it starts up and as I usually have to click my way to get it to accept my companion trusted 2nd factor device or PIN to authorize the CCleaner action, it reminds me on a daily basis that there must be something the others are doing that your team are not.

I've cancelled the subscription for a renewal going forward but am hopeful to see an update from you folks which does away with these UAC prompts altogether. You have until April next year to change my mind.