New
#1
Interaction between applications running with different rights
I have 2 Lenovo small form factor PCs, both running Windows 10 Pro and both set up identically to open and run a labelling application whenever it is launched from either the usual file associations through file explorer, or via hyperlinks in an excel spreadsheet. Both PCs are standard user accounts (no choice there). The apps in question (according to taskmanager) are basically EXCEL.EXE, bartend.exe and explorer.exe (file explorer).
When all three of these apps have the same permissions, they all interact no problem - the working PC shows all three apps as having no elevated rights.
But on the faulty PC, bartend.exe will only ever run with elevated rights and hangs if you try to run it without. Double click one of its associated files in file explorer to open in the application itself, it hangs as explorer.exe is not itself elevated, even though bartend.exe is already running, but elevated. Click on a hyperlink in excel.exe, same thing if excel.exe is not elevated - however, run excel.exe again but this time elevated, and the same hyperlink works perfectly. There also seems to be some odd double interaction with file associations for the bartend.exe app, one for when it has elevated rights, and one broken-looking one for, I presume, lower.
All of this may by obvious, but what isn't obvious is how the hell do you stop an application from only ever running elevated? Plenty of advice on google to grant an application admin rights, but nothing on getting it to run without.
Quote