Plugin permission issue with UAC

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wjstarck
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Plugin permission issue with UAC

Post by wjstarck » Wed Dec 02, 2015 8:36 am

Hello-

I have a customer that is having difficulty getting my plugin to run. This office has a mixture of Windows 7, Windows 8 (on tablets) and a Windows 10 box. They have UAC turned on. The doctor is the only one with Admin privileged account. I have suggested running OD as an administrator (Properties > Shortcut > Advanced > Run as Administrator. This works for the doc. but everyone else gets the UAC dialog and so consequently they are unable to run the plugin as they don't have the UAC password.

My solution was to always turn that accursed UAC off but this doc is hesitant to do that for security reasons. Any suggestions? Any recommendations/history on UAC vs. no UAC with regard to Open Dental and overall security as a whole?

Thanks,
Last edited by wjstarck on Fri Dec 04, 2015 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cheers,

Bill Starck, DDS
Big Idea Software, LLC
Developer, EASy(Electronic Anesthesia System) for Open Dental
817-807-1709
TX, USA

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jsalmon
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Re: Plugin permission issue wioth UAC

Post by jsalmon » Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:16 am

I've seen some people use weird workarounds to get specific apps to not pop up the UAC notifications like creating scheduled "tasks". There are some apps you can purchase that do the same thing or even downloading the windows SDK which has a tool (or so I've read back in the day) where you can selectively stop an app from triggering UAC.

As for stopping the UAC pop up at the core, I've never read a single article about it because I've always been able to convince people to turn the annoying thing off. They claim that they warn people when "the app tries to make changes to your PC or Windows settings that require administrator permissions" but don't go into detail what that means. Open Dental doesn't care about Windows settings other than file permissions which you either have access to those directories or you don't.

I've never heard victory stories of UAC saving people from malicious software. I've only heard of it hindering honest workers trying to do honest work but needing big brother's permission to do what they get paid to do in the first place. Then again I don't talk with or work with anyone that opens up obviously malicious emails or peruses the internet for cat pictures on their lunch break that inadvertently introduces such "malicious-ness" into the network / computer... So maybe it does save lives.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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dgraffeo
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Re: Plugin permission issue wioth UAC

Post by dgraffeo » Fri Dec 04, 2015 9:40 am

Then again I don't talk with or work with anyone that opens up obviously malicious ... cat pictures on their lunch break
that you know of :wink:
"To understand what recursion is, you must first understand recursion."

David Graffeo
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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Arna
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Re: Plugin permission issue wioth UAC

Post by Arna » Fri Dec 04, 2015 11:00 am

dgraffeo wrote:
Then again I don't talk with or work with anyone that opens up obviously malicious ... cat pictures on their lunch break
that you know of :wink:
He doesn't know his coworkers that well, at all...
Entropy isn't what it used to be...

Arna Meyer

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