how can I do this?
I need to distribute a USB drive with Truecrypt (yes I know its not supported now, I don't care. It works perfect for what I need. No politics in this thread please)
I want to make sure Windows does not keep asking me for UAC every time Truecrypt mounts/dismounts.
This needs to be a portable app that runs with a script quietly in the background.
any idea please?
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Short answer: You can't.
Longer answer: Windows won't let apps do certain things without administrative permissions. The way Windows notifies the user of this is via UAC so apps don't go off and do bad things without the user allowing it. Things like install drivers (even temporarily) and assign drive letters require admin rights. TrueCrypt requires both of those things.
The bottom line is that TrueCrypt or any other encryption program running from a flash drive needs admin rights via UAC to be able to load its driver and assign a drive letter. The only way around this is if the app is already installed on the local PC (by an admin) and configured to allow regular users to do it.
If you only use it on your own PCs, something like TrueCrypt is great. If you need to run it on any PCs other than your own, it's useless.
There's already about 10 years of discussion on this topic. If you want full drive encryption with the ability to run apps from that drive and be able to have users be able to run it without admin rights, you'll need to use a hardware encrypted flash drive. That's why we sell the PortableApps.com Carbide.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
really appreciate all the help you do on this forum and related apps
I'm letting my users that this product requires admin rights.
One of the features I have is a special version of Chrome (Xchromium) with a proxy.
This is to be used for people to use the full freedom of the web when they might be sat in public place in a country with no freedom speech.
theres a kill switch - this quits all applications, the menu launcher and dismounts the TC volume, this is done in about 20 seconds, but then part way thru this process UAC will get in the way. Otherwise it works perfect.
The xBible project
bringing The Bible to closed off countries
As I said, UAC prompts can't be hidden by the developer or by a script, nor should they. The only thing you could do is run your main script at admin level, but that introduces HUGE security issues if you run the browser as admin level.
Also, keep in mind, if a user is in a public place (university, net cafe, hotel, etc), they will not be able to use your product as they won't have admin rights. This is why software-based encryption has never worked well for portable software.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!