Bundle .exe needs UAC? Any way to prevent this?

[EmbeddedMan]

I think part of the problem is that the .EXE is downloaded from a web page.
And I think it is the same if the .EXE comes from a mail or a .ZIP inside a mail.

If the .EXE comes from a Setup, it should be ok.
I will make some tests in the week-end.

Eros,

I'm certain that is not the case for a couple reasons. The main one is that when I built the bundle, I just ran it locally - never uploaded it to GitHub - and it immediately produced the UAC. I do agree with you that Windows SmartScreen (Windows 8/10) will keep track of applications downloaded from websites and present different (Not UAC) warnings to users based on if the app is deemed unsafe or not.

One thing I'm curious about is in the ThinBasic_Bundle_UI window, Version Info tab, there is a "Application Key:" Field. Where does that number come from? Is it generated randomly each time you bundle, or is it generated once for each unique .tbasic source file? I wonder if Windows tracks application permissions by that Application Key or something in some way.

Have you been able to create a bundle from the .tbasic source code? Did it give you the UAC window when you ran the exe?

Thanks so much for looking into this - I know this isn't the most important thing for TB, so don't stress about finding an answer. It's more of just a support thing - people running the program will ask me why the UAC comes up, and if I can get it to go away they won't ever ask why it's there. :-)

*Brian

[EmbeddedMan]

OK, I completely figured it out, and you're NOT going to believe what it is.

Are you sitting down?

It's the filename.

Yup. If you have the word "update" in the name of any .exe file, it will bring up UAC when you run it.

All you have to do to prevent this is simply change one letter in the filename - say EBBUdaterGUI_v243.exe - and it will then run without the UAC dialog.

So far I've only tested this on Windows 7, but I'll bet the same thing happens on Windows 10 and 8 as well.

It has nothing to do with the .exe file itself. Just the filename. Oh Windows. You're trying to be so clever, and yet you fail so hard.

Anyway, that was a lot of work for something so silly.

*Brian

[EmbeddedMan]

And, now that I know what to search for ("What filenames trigger UAC"), I see the full answer:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...the-uac-prompt

That is very interesting. I assume there's no way to create any sort of "manifest" XML file to be used when compiling a bundle EXE, right?

*Brian

[Petr Schreiber]

Brian,

there is a trick when you can put the file following name convention "yourprogramname.exe.manifest" next to the EXE file, and that should do the trick.

The systematic way is to put that file to EXE "resources". This is something which could be investigated on our side and I will now put some time to investigate how this can be achieved.


Petr

[EmbeddedMan]

Petr,

Very cool!! I will check that out (first I have to learn more about what you can put in a manifest file). Thanks for the tip-

*Brian

[EmbeddedMan]

Petr,

I could not get the .exe.manifest method to work.

Is the bundle process supposed look for a yourprogramname.exe.manifest and include it in the resulting .exe?

*Brian

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Brian,

with Microsoft Windows SDK, you get access to mt.exe tool, which allows to embed the manifest to EXE file. I tried it, it works, but... we don't want thinbasic users to depend on this third party dependency.
I think the proper way would be to offer the user, during bundle process, to embed some files to resources (for example manifest).

What do you think, Eros?


Petr

P.S. The Microsoft Windows SDK way works with bundled files, I tried it, but it is too much bloat for thinBasic coders. We will make it easy...

[Michael Clease]

Petr, It looks like windows 10 SDK has renamed the tool as mage.exe (mageui.exe) unless I am mistaken.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.2 Tools

Mike C.

[ErosOlmi]

Dear Brian,

I've made some changes to bundling application hopefully should solve the problem.
I've changed the manifest file that is included into bundled exe adding e new node into xml file that should say to the OS about security.
I've followed indications here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx using "requestedExecutionLevel" "asInvoker"

I attach new version of ThinBasic_Bundle_UI.exe
Please substitute the one you have into \thinBasic\thinAir\

Let me k now if it works.

Ciao
Eros