Suppress all UAC prompts for standard users without breaking the Microsoft Store in Windows 8.1?

UAC is disabled (EnableLua reg key = 0) on our Windows 7 build and neither standard users nor admins see any UAC prompts. We want to replicate this on our Windows 8.1 build without breaking the Microsoft Store, but disabling UAC by setting the EnableLua reg key to 0 breaks the Microsoft Store, so we have to set the EnableLua reg key to 1 which means standard users are prompted for credentials when trying to access regedit, etc. Not ideal. In an attempt to suppress the UAC prompts for standard users, I changed the ConsentPromptBehaviorUser reg key from 0 to 6, based on the following testing:-

0 = "your system administrator has blocked this program" when trying to run ActiveSetup reg keys during 
1 = asks for admin credentials when launching UAC which is set to Always Notify
2 = asks for admin credentials when launching UAC which is set to Always Notify
3 = asks for admin credentials when launching UAC which is set to Always Notify me (and do not dim my desktop) when:
6 = asks for admin credentials when launching UAC which is set to Never Notify

How can we suppress all UAC prompts for standard users (i.e. non-admins) without breaking the Microsoft Store please?

Thanks
Scott



  • Edited by mr5h Wednesday, July 01, 2015 3:00 PM
July 1st, 2015 2:50pm

We use ActiveSetup to import HKCU reg keys for every new user at logon so we cannot use an admin account to import these reg keys, but this doesn't stop UAC prompting the user for his/her password. We want to stop UAC prompting standard users altogether. Is this possible please?
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July 7th, 2015 4:51am

How can we suppress all UAC prompts for standard users (i.e. non-admins) without breaking the Microsoft Store please?

To my knowledge, you cannot.
This is a fundamental design aspect of Windows 8 - you can have either/or, but not both.

Maybe it's different in Win10, I haven't tinkered with that yet...

July 7th, 2015 7:25am

Oh dear. Why would Microsoft design the Microsoft Store to break if UAC is disabled? Bizarre and extremely inconvenient? Thanks for confirming Don.

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July 7th, 2015 7:28am

On our Windows 7 build, we don't use roaming profiles so we rely on ActiveSetup reg keys to automatically configure every new user logon, the Microsoft Store is not an option so we simply disable UAC and ActiveSetup works fine; our Windows 7 build has been working fine for over a year.

We tried to replicate this setup on our new Windows 8 build but obviously we now understand we cannot suppress UAC prompts for standard users without breaking the Microsoft Store, which means that every new user logon pops up a UAC prompt for every ActiveSetup reg key that is trying to be imported. 

So, is there is a way we can either 1) suppress these UAC prompts without breaking the Microsoft Store? or 2) an alternative way to achieve the same goal as ActiveSetup that doesn't interact with UAC so we can configure apps for every new user logon please?

Thanks
Scott

July 10th, 2015 5:20am

On our Windows 7 build, we don't use roaming profiles so we rely on ActiveSetup reg keys to automatically configure every new user logon, the Microsoft Store is not an option so we simply disable UAC and ActiveSetup works fine; our Windows 7 build has been working fine for over a year.

We tried to replicate this setup on our new Windows 8 build but obviously we now understand we cannot suppress UAC prompts for standard users without breaking the Microsoft Store, which means that every new user logon pops up a UAC prompt for every ActiveSetup reg key that is trying to be imported. 

So, is there is a way we can either 1) suppress these UAC prompts without breaking the Microsoft Store? or 2) an alternative way to achieve the same goal as ActiveSetup that doesn't interact with UAC so we can configure apps for every new user logon please?

Thanks
Scott

I guess it depends upon what you're doing with ActiveSetup. We don't use AS very often at all, but I've never seen it raise a UAC consent/credential prompt dialog.

Are you calling something (a script?) via AS, and the called routine is unsigned or trying to write/modify HKLM or write/modify c:\programfiles or something restricted?

AS itself works fine, but you must be asking AS to do something which requires elevation..

Logon scripts, Startup Scripts, Group Policy Preferences, MSI custom actions, are all possibilities, it depends upon what you need to achieve in your "configure apps for every new user logon" .

I guess your "apps" are Win32 applications and not some other kind of app? You may need to look deeply into these "apps" for what they do/need and how you can meet that need.

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July 10th, 2015 8:09pm

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