Windows UAC for Dayz Commander

[Rakshasas]

Hello,

I am a new-comer to DayZ and DayZ Commander. I am trying to get Steam and DayZ to play nice (I bought the game outside of Steam, fyi, but I like the overlay)

Anyway, I noticed immediately after installing DayZ Commander that it requires a UAC prompt, meaning it requires elevated privileges. I'd like to know why. Play withSix for example does not need that prompt, and I can't imagine why DayZ Commander would. The problem is now that in order to talk to friends on Ventrilo, it will require administrator for push to talk, and Steam now requires administrator. 

As you can see, the UAC shield is on the shortcut. Also, I am someone who understands security implications and while giving these programs admin rights isn't a big deal (other than Ventrilo, I suspect due to its age and lack of maintenance that it has several known exploits at this point in time), the principle of least privileges means that you shouldn't give an application privileges unless there is a reason for it. And for all I know maybe something isn't setup properly on my system, which is making it require UAC when it shouldn't. Any ideas?

Oh and to make sure this post doesn't sound hostile. The reason why I care so much and not just using Play withSix is because DayZ Commander is much easier to use with the friends system / server browsing being far superior, oh and of course the Steam overlay also works just find with Play withSix, and I've noticed a few posts regarding the Steam overlay. Perhaps these problems are related?

Thanks,

Rakshasas

[dotjosh]

This app started as just an application for my close friends, and very quickly become extremely popular.  Because it started that way, to not worry about ever having more than one UAC prompt, I just required it from the start.  

From there, it also helped to eliminate any directory management, file-reading errors that could be caused by security.  I've also recently added a way to monitor/kill your current game (cross-process access).  I want to re-evaulate the need for UAC, but I have to do so carefully as windows does special things when running as admin and when you aren't that will pop up with a 230k install base, if I just change it without some deep investigation.

TL;DR; It probably doesn't' need it, but I haven't had time to look at no longer requiring it.

Thanks for the kind words, and know that your concerns aren't a lost cause,

Josh

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DayZCommander" group.
To post to this group, send email to dayzco...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to dayzcommande...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/dayzcommander/-/lBraNMLYLxUJ.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Rakshasas]

That makes perfect sense of course. If you ever decide to look into removing UAC and you need a tester shoot me over an email. I'd be happy to play around with it :)

[arparso]

I'd also like to see this changed. DayZ Commander is a wonderful tool, but the default requirement to launch as administrator provides quite some inconvenience.

For day-to-day use and gaming I run a standard (non-admin) user account on my Windows machine, as has been recommended by Microsoft and several other outlets for over a decade now. Having to run DayZ Commander as admin means I'll have to login to my separate admin account using UAC... which will result in ArmA 2 running for that separate account as well, creating separate saves and configs on that admin account (and not my regular account). Then there's also the Ventrilo problem, where I'll have to restart Ventrilo as admin just to be able to speak with my mates again while I'm in DayZ.

Of course I realize how many problems removing the admin requirement would introduce with the vast install base of your tool. I can live with the current situation, because the advantages of DayZ Commander far outweigh its disadvantages. It'd still be great if this issue could be looked into in the future, though.

... in fact, I've already "fixed" this issue for my own personal needs by removing the admin requirement myself. So far, DayZ Commander works fine without it (but I don't have the game installed in the Program Files folder and thus have no security issues with file access).

Anyway, great work so far! I can't really imagine playing DayZ without the Commander anymore :)

On Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:31:50 PM UTC+2, dotjosh wrote:
> This app started as just an application for my close friends, and very quickly become extremely popular.  Because it started that way, to not worry about ever having more than one UAC prompt, I just required it from the start.  
>
>
>
>
> From there, it also helped to eliminate any directory management, file-reading errors that could be caused by security.  I've also recently added a way to monitor/kill your current game (cross-process access).  I want to re-evaulate the need for UAC, but I have to do so carefully as windows does special things when running as admin and when you aren't that will pop up with a 230k install base, if I just change it without some deep investigation.
>
>
>
>
> TL;DR; It probably doesn't' need it, but I haven't had time to look at no longer requiring it.
>
>
> Thanks for the kind words, and know that your concerns aren't a lost cause,
>
>
>
>
> Josh
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 3:18 PM, Rakshasas <raks...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hello,
> I am a new-comer to DayZ and DayZ Commander. I am trying to get Steam and DayZ to play nice (I bought the game outside of Steam, fyi, but I like the overlay)
>
>
> Anyway, I noticed immediately after installing DayZ Commander that it requires a UAC prompt, meaning it requires elevated privileges. I'd like to know why. Play withSix for example does not need that prompt, and I can't imagine why DayZ Commander would. The problem is now that in order to talk to friends on Ventrilo, it will require administrator for push to talk, and Steam now requires administrator. 
>
>
>
>
>

[Rakshasas]

I'm interested in how you accomplished that! I also do not have Arma 2 installed under program files, but rather "C:\Games\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2" (it resides on my C:\ because I want it to make use of my SSD)

That I thought, would negate the file access issues DayZCommander invokes but it still asks for UAC.

Also, DayZCommander resides in: "F:\Dotjosh Studios\DayZ Commander\Current\DayZCommander.exe"

What am I missing? did you change the permissions in anyway as well?

[arp...@googlemail.com]

No, I modified the DayZCommander.exe to not ask for admin rights anymore. Some months ago I created a tool exactly for that purpose: to remove the admin requirement from another game (Train Simulator 2012, to be specific). I used the same tool for DayZCommander and now have a working non-admin version of the commander. Of course, that "fix" will probably need to be applied again after each update of the DayZCommander.exe and certain features might not work... I didn't do extensive testing or anything, but the server browser and running/updating DayZ worked just fine for me.

If you want to give it a try, here's the download link:
http://arparso.de/files/NoAdmin.rar

Just drag-and-drop your DayZCommander.exe on the "NoAdmin.exe" and it will backup the original file and remove the admin requirement. Alternatively you can open a command console (cmd.exe) and run "NoAdmin.exe <path-to-DayZCommander.exe>".