Tag Archives: Windows Vista

How to run a program with administrative privilege using keyboard shortcuts?

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Simple Version

  • Find the program from the start menu
  • Simply press Ctrl+Shift+Enter

Detailed

I was fed up on right-clicking programs and choose “Run As Administrator” to run in the elevated mode. I can simply set the properties of any programs in Vista/Windows 7 to always run as administrator. Or simply you can turn of UAC, in the worst case I can turn of few services to make explorer to run as administrator always.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But rather I prefer to use

  • Find the program from the start menu
  • Simply press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
You can run any programs in elevated mode using this shortcut!
 

What you can do if Windows Startup repair fail to repair your bootsector?

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It was painful time with Ubuntu and Windows Dual Boot Information. With my foolish thoughts I removed the native Linux Partition where I had installed Ubuntu Linux 10.04. Also I removed the boot sector. Then I decided to install 11.04 under Windows Partition itself. Just installed Ubuntu and rebooted to finish the installation. Yea it was gone. It displayed a grub rescue command prompt and I was in blues.

Somehow I managed to get the Windows 7 boot USB to repair my startup for Windows. Again it had happened. The Master Boot Record wasn’t promptly recognized by Windows. It says no problems at all with your Windows Installation. What’s next. I have tried several options to like Fixing the MBR with command line and exporting and importing the boot record and importing it again to corrupt the MBR and tried the repair again. No ways!

Finally how I had to recreate the MBR. How do we do that? (BTW, do this at your own risk. Don’t blame me later)

1. Insert your bootable DVD/USB or Startup repair disc to your computer.
2. Choose Recovery options.
3. Click on Startup Repair and check if it works.

If doesn’t work

4. Open the command window and enter the following commands 

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

Now you’re done. Reboot your PC and see if it works. Under Windows Vista, you will have to change to X:\boot\ folder to access bootrec and bootsect executable.

 

Windows Registry Virtualization

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Registry virtualization is implemented in Windows Vista and 7 for providing application support for legacy applications. The legacy application (till Windows XP) runs in administrator privilege by default which enables the crappy applications to access the sensitive system area without user knowledge. UAC is the solution introduced to defend this kind of attacks. By default the applications will be launched in user privileged mode and the application can request user if it requires to have elevated privilege.

Registry Virtualization emulates the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software write operations under HKEY_USER\<User SID>_Classes\VirtualStore\Machine\Software path.

Open Registry Virtualization – If the application doesn’t have enough privilege to open a specific key, the virtualized key will be opened with maximum privilege.

Write Registry Virtualization – If the application doesn’t have enough privilege to write to the specified location, the write operation will be performed under virtual store path.

Read Registry Virtualization – System provides a merged copy of information from Virtual store and the original global store together.

Virtualization is provided for

  • 32 bit interactive process
  • Keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software
  • Keys that an administrator write to (if the application doesn’t have privilege)

Virtualization is disabled for

  • 64 bit processes
  • Processes which doesn’t have GUI (e.g Services)
  • Process that impersonate a user
  • Kernel mode processes such as drivers
  • Process that has specified requestedExecutionLevel in their manifest
  • Keys and subkeys of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT.

The applications which required to run under Windows Vista and 7 must follow the UAC guidelines and should not use registry to store the applications information. Microsoft may stop supporting this feature in the upcoming versions of Windows. So keep your applications compatible with the latest platform.

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