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Does UAC and Game Jackal work under Windows 7?

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bigun

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OK - i have been following all of the threads on this to get a solution for my kids PCs. Prior to discovering Game Jackal, I was using virtual drives to store game CDs. This worked, but was a pain for me to manage.

I tested it with a lot of the kids games, it works great. I bought two lifetime subscriptions before i realized Game Jackal cannot be launched without UAC prompt for administrator password.

This is a showstopper for me. I am running GJ 3.1.2.2 with Vista Home Basic SP1. Please don't tell me to disable UAC. Anybody suggesting that does not manage a PC for kids.

I tried Matthew's solution using task manager. Did not launch GJ when logging into kids account.

I tried Burnerhead's solution using the SDB file, it did not seem to have any effect, still get UAC prompt launching GJ from kids account. I am competent with PC administration. I follow instructions carefully.

So my questions:
1. has anyone tried GJ on Win7 Beta? can it launch from a non-administrator account without the UAC prompt? If yes, I will load this OS on both PCs. I would like to have high confidence this will solve the problem before going to this extreme.
2. any other ideas? kids games are really the only use for these PCs, so i need a solution.

BIG THANKS to Burnerhead for helping to flag this issue and working to fix it. He seems to be the only person doing anything about it - even though he doesn't work for slysoft. :bang:
 
OK - i have been following all of the threads on this to get a solution for my kids PCs. Prior to discovering Game Jackal, I was using virtual drives to store game CDs. This worked, but was a pain for me to manage.

I tested it with a lot of the kids games, it works great. I bought two lifetime subscriptions before i realized Game Jackal cannot be launched without UAC prompt for administrator password.
Click to expand...
There are reasons we require admin access... however we are looking to remedy this long term.

This is a showstopper for me. I am running GJ 3.1.2.2 with Vista Home Basic SP1. Please don't tell me to disable UAC. Anybody suggesting that does not manage a PC for kids.
Click to expand...
Understood, however disabling this would make no difference anyway because your issue is to do with user access. Disabling UAC will only remove the prompt for admin users... restricted users will still be required to enter a admin password.

I tried Matthew's solution using task manager. Did not launch GJ when logging into kids account.
Click to expand...
There must have been some misunderstanding here when I answered this post because the "task" method still requires admin access (it is just another way to bypass the UAC prompt).

I tried Burnerhead's solution using the SDB file, it did not seem to have any effect, still get UAC prompt launching GJ from kids account. I am competent with PC administration. I follow instructions carefully.
Click to expand...
Once again... same reason as above. A restrict account will always prompt for admin access when running an admin application.

So my questions:
1. has anyone tried GJ on Win7 Beta? can it launch from a non-administrator account without the UAC prompt? If yes, I will load this OS on both PCs. I would like to have high confidence this will solve the problem before going to this extreme.
Click to expand...
We have only run brief tests... however I would expect there would be little difference between Vista and Win7 here.
2. any other ideas? kids games are really the only use for these PCs, so i need a solution.
Click to expand...
There is another option. Install Game Jackal Plus (http://forum.slysoft.com/showpost.php?p=110046&postcount=2). This will install a service which runs under an admin account. Game Jackal Plus will then detect a game starting (regardless of the user or their access rights) and active the associated profile. This is how our enterprise users manage their cybercafe machines.

Download the addon and have a look through attached document. If you have any questions let me know.
 
When trying to use profiles created under windows 7, I get access violation errors. In addition, my profiles created before moving to windows 7 no longer work.
 
Matthew, thanks for the response. I downloaded GJ Plus and installed the service and the add-in, and rebooted.
I am still unable to run GJ_cl from a standard user account without entering the password.

To be clear, here is what I'm trying to do:
From a clean boot, log in to standard user account
launch a desktop shortcut to GJ_cl, without having to enter admin password

Alternatively, if the GJ interface could be automatically launched at standard user login, this would be acceptable also.

After installing the GJ plus service, I am still prompted for admin password.

I should note that the desktop shortcut to GJ_cl has the "shield" at the lower right corner of the icon, so it is clearly going to result in a UAC prompt.

i think at this point i am going to upgrade these machines to Vista Ultimate and use the runas command with the /savecred option as Burnerhead suggested. I am lucky to have an MSDN subscription so i can do this without addn'l cost. Others wouldn't be so lucky.

If have other suggestions i will try them. Thanks.
 
bigun said:
Matthew, thanks for the response. I downloaded GJ Plus and installed the service and the add-in, and rebooted.
I am still unable to run GJ_cl from a standard user account without entering the password.

To be clear, here is what I'm trying to do:
From a clean boot, log in to standard user account
launch a desktop shortcut to GJ_cl, without having to enter admin password

Alternatively, if the GJ interface could be automatically launched at standard user login, this would be acceptable also.

After installing the GJ plus service, I am still prompted for admin password.

I should note that the desktop shortcut to GJ_cl has the "shield" at the lower right corner of the icon, so it is clearly going to result in a UAC prompt.

i think at this point i am going to upgrade these machines to Vista Ultimate and use the runas command with the /savecred option as Burnerhead suggested. I am lucky to have an MSDN subscription so i can do this without addn'l cost. Others wouldn't be so lucky.

If have other suggestions i will try them. Thanks.
Click to expand...

With Plus installed there is no need to run the Game Jackal generated shortcut (these will still require admin access). All you need to do is start the game from the start menu. i.e. you start the game as if the cd/dvd is in the drive. Plus will detect the game starting and then activate the appropriate profile.
 
I finally have this working. Here was my problem. I have a bunch of older kids games that either have a very minimal install, or no install at all.

By that I mean the "installed program" is just a shortcut to an executable on the game CD. I can create GJ profiles like this, and launch them from within the GJ environment, but the method of "launching a game from the start menu" does not work, because there is no true executable on the hard drive. Here is what i had to do to fix this situation:

First i tried to create a .vbs file that launches the program on the CD. And I would use this as the program launcher. For some reason this didn't work as a way to launch a GJ profile. Then i tried creating a .bat file, and i don't think that could launch a GJ profile either. I finally wound up using a built in program built into Windows (IEXPRESS.EXE) to convert a batch file to an executable (.EXE). Using that as a program launcher, i was able to successfully launch GJ automatically (using GJ Plus) from a std user account without having to enter any admin password.

So i have what i need now. If there is interest in this i could type up a quick tutorial on the process. For future product versions, I would suggest taking this type of situation into account and seeing if the product can address this situation natively.

Big thanks to Matthew, Burnerhead and others for helping me through the process of getting to a solution. :rock:
 
@matthew:
Can you please tell me and probably a lot of people are wondering how GameJackal Plus is supposed to solve the UAC issues?

I just installed it but have to configure it that the autostart and the autostart of profiles is working?
I see no tray-icon on startup. Vista still blocks the Autostart of GameJackal.
Well, a process of GameJackal gets started but that doesn't help me a lot.

Thank you for your help!
BurnerHEAD
 
BurnerHEAD said:
@matthew:
Can you please tell me and probably a lot of people are wondering how GameJackal Plus is supposed to solve the UAC issues?

I just installed it but have to configure it that the autostart and the autostart of profiles is working?
I see no tray-icon on startup. Vista still blocks the Autostart of GameJackal.
Well, a process of GameJackal gets started but that doesn't help me a lot.

Thank you for your help!
BurnerHEAD
Click to expand...

It is not designed to solve the UAC issue. It is designed to solve user access problems (these are 2 different things). It does this by.
1) Installing a service that controls the GJ application. This service has admin rights.
2) Installing Game Watch which is a GJ addon that detects games starting and the activates the associated profile.

As a result, a user with a limited account can start a game... Game Watch detects the game starting and activates the profile. Because GJ is spawned from the service with admin rights... GJ itself has the admin rights required to work correctly. All of this has nothing to do with UAC, although technically you could use it to bypass the UAC prompt because you are starting the game directly.
 
Okay thanks for the info.

but is it possible to start the interface with that and to create a profile?

Best Regards,
BurnerHEAD
 
BurnerHEAD said:
Okay thanks for the info.

but is it possible to start the interface with that and to create a profile?

Best Regards,
BurnerHEAD
Click to expand...

Not in the limited account... however if you log into an admin account, the anwser is yes. If you start the GJ interface, the service will detect this and shutdown it's own instance of GJ and allow the new instance to start. Then if/when you shutdown your instance of GJ (or logoff), the service will restart it's own instance (hope all that make sense).
 
matthew said:
Not in the limited account... however if you log into an admin account, the anwser is yes. If you start the GJ interface, the service will detect this and shutdown it's own instance of GJ and allow the new instance to start. Then if/when you shutdown your instance of GJ (or logoff), the service will restart it's own instance (hope all that make sense).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. But I think that it's technically possible, to start the user interface in the limited account and that would be a very important feature.

But finally: when working with the service does the admin user still have to click on that UAC prompt?

I'm just asking because I have an idea in mind and I'm too lazy to plug-in my external hard-drive to my gaming-machine because when updating to the latest GameJackal beta, somehow my license got lost and so GameJackal isn't working anymore. Do you have an idea why this happenend? It only happened with the latest beta.

Best Regards,
BurnerHEAD
 
this can be done.

I created a task under task schedular to run gamejackal whenever someone logged on and i set it to use my account for the best level of privileges.
 
Like the original poster, I was a bit too quick to buy a lifetime subscription for GameJackal Pro (I like SlySoft products and have a licence for each).

As soon as I saw the UAC shield on the application (and command line) exes, I knew it would not work on my family PC with limited accounts.

I downloaded Game Jackal Plus but the documentation seems to suggest it won't work properly on 64-Bit Windows. Not being able to start a game from a desktop icon is a bit of a showstopper for the kids.

I appreciate the Plus add-on is a bit of a workaround but are there any plans to address this properly, with full support for 64-Bit Windows?
 
MikeMcr said:
Like the original poster, I was a bit too quick to buy a lifetime subscription for GameJackal Pro (I like SlySoft products and have a licence for each).

As soon as I saw the UAC shield on the application (and command line) exes, I knew it would not work on my family PC with limited accounts.

I downloaded Game Jackal Plus but the documentation seems to suggest it won't work properly on 64-Bit Windows. Not being able to start a game from a desktop icon is a bit of a showstopper for the kids.

I appreciate the Plus add-on is a bit of a workaround but are there any plans to address this properly, with full support for 64-Bit Windows?
Click to expand...

We are working on rectifying the whole UAC and limited user account issue for the next major release of GJ.
 
Matthew

I'm just looking at a trial version of Game Jackal now (3.2.1.4) and I see the UAC issue is still there with limited user accounts.

Like some of the others, this is a major problem for me. I need to keep my kids access well and truly locked down! Can you give some sort of time-line for when the next major release will come out (and whether it has been possible to deal with the UAC isue)?
 
embeeuu said:
Matthew

I'm just looking at a trial version of Game Jackal now (3.2.1.4) and I see the UAC issue is still there with limited user accounts.

Like some of the others, this is a major problem for me. I need to keep my kids access well and truly locked down! Can you give some sort of time-line for when the next major release will come out (and whether it has been possible to deal with the UAC isue)?
Click to expand...

Please try Version 4 RC2:
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=36738

It solves the UAC issue. :)
 
The fix that i posted earlier also fixes this problem, without having to use the new beta.

I created a task under task schedular to run gamejackal whenever someone logged on and i set it to use my account for the best level of privileges.
Click to expand...

I can confirm that this works in Windows 7
 
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