Scan With Elevated Privileges?

1eyedjack

Hi all. I am running Windows Vista home premium 32 bit.

I generally prefer to restrict my privileges to that of a "standard user" except where I know that I am going to be running admin tasks. So I have set up an admin user account and a standard user account, spending most of my time logged on to the latter.

Occasionally I run a virus scan while logged onto the standard account, and it finds items which it cannot disinfect due to insufficient privileges.

I find this irritating. Yes, presumably I could log onto the admin account while doing the scan, or I could change the standard user to an admin user, but I find these alternatives inconvenient. Many times that I am doing this I am multi-tasking with other stuff that does not require admin privileges (and in any case the data files are stored in the standard user's area).

What I would prefer, is an option to run a virus scan with elevated privileges even though I may be logged in as a standard user. Sure, it should prompt me for an admin user's password before allowing the elevated scan to run, but I have seen other software that seems to have no problem with that small thing.

Just my tuppence-worth.

With kind regards

alexcrist

Hello Jack Sheet,

While you are using Windows Vista, you could just use the Administrator account and rely on the User Account Control built-into the operating system to restrict your privileges. In case you didn't know about this feature (UAC, in short form), it's purpose is this: while you are running on an Administrator account, all your applications are actually running with Limited privileges. Whenever some application needs elevation, UAC will just show a confirmation popup asking you for permission. If you allow it, that application will be elevated to administrator privileges, while the other applications running in your system will continue to run with Limited rights. It's basically the same thing as running a Limited account, but it's less of a hassle in cases where you need higher permissions.

Also, about BitDefender: after doing a scan, if BitDefender detects items that it cannot clean due to restricted privileges, on the very last step of the scan (the one which shows final results) will will be informed that some items couldn't be cleaned because of right restrictions. Also you are given the choice, on the spot, to re-run the scan on those items, with elevated permissions (at this point UAC shows the elevation dialog and asks for your permission).

I didn't actually test this on a Limited account, but on an Administrator, UAC-enabled account, works pretty similar: initial scan can't clean all items (due to the fact that the scan runs with Limited rights, because of UAC), and after that an elevated scan can be ran. I suppose that it should behave in the same way if you run it on a Limited account. Please try this and post here the results.

Cris.

P.S.: Please note the attached screenshot for a hint of how it should look like.