I mean I get the technical side of it: the setup process needs to have elevated privileges to perform the installation. But you don't want the application itself to have those privileges.

But look at the human side of it: you download something off the internet, and install it. You then have to go hunting around before running it.

That's sad.

The average attention span is now resting at around 5 milliseconds. If you can't find a way to launch the application at the end of installation a lot of users are simply never going to get around to using the software they've installed.

It ought to be easy for developers to provide the features users use.

Actually, looking at the 'technical' side again, this is not just a problem for installation software. It's a common siutation. Say I've written a code editor, and I want to allow the user to launch other tools from this code editor (e.g. 'Preview in Mozilla'). The tools won't be fully trusted by the code editor. When I launch such a process, I'll want to give it the lowest privileges I can, regardless of whether or not I'm an administrator.

I'm basing my opinion on an article at TweakUAC that says:

"Microsoft has... for some reason... not offered a similarly easy way of start[ing] a non-elevated process from an elevated one."

That article provides a Visual Studio 2005 project that shows how an administrative process can launch a process as a standard user. I haven't tried it myself: but it don't look easy.

(All found thanks to the daily grind)

See also Russian Reversal

'Jason' on Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:30:53 GMT, sez:

Sorry, I find nothing more irritating than an installer that wants to show me a readme file and start the application immediately. In most cases the installer just asked me where I would like icons in the Start, Programs menu so I know where to find it when I'm ready.

Also, it's been a while since I looked at security for starting new processes but I thought going to elevated privileges created a new security token but reducing privileges just used the same token with certain parts disabled. As a result there was a possibility for hijacking the demoted token to get back the elevated privileges. But maybe I'm wrong, it was a while ago.

'Mark' on Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:06:05 GMT, sez:

I also don't like to launch programs from the installer. That just means I will need to hunt for the program the *second* time that I launch it. Which might be several days later when I can't remember that the shortcut is under the company name XXX instead of the program name.

However, that didn't stop me from adding the launch now option in the installer for my application...... :-)

I have already wished that I did not add this option. Many of my clients use terminal services. When my application runs from the install it is still in the terminal server "install" mode. This causes per user registry entries that are created during the first run to be copied to the shadow key. There is nothing that will break an application faster then trying to access files in a different user's profile.

'lb' on Fri, 22 Dec 2006 03:58:59 GMT, sez:

points taken mark and jason -- maybe 'launch on install' isn't all that ;-)

good review of some security issues too mark.

'ViperWorm' on Sun, 14 Jan 2007 08:03:07 GMT, sez:

Well in my opinion there's nothing bad to excluding the RUN NOW button BUT they should put a substitute button that would, upon clicking on it, open the folder you just used as the installation folder and then you could easily select the .exe file and run it...

Of course I am not a programmer so I don't really know how Vista works but my idea sounds pretty reasonable to me. Take care ^^

'lb' on Sun, 14 Jan 2007 08:05:57 GMT, sez:

nice idea Viper.
i like that when you download something you can open the folder immediately -- and when you unzip something, you get to open the target location immediately.
applying this same concept to the installer sounds about right.

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