Running CoH from a User Account
By
DarkEden,
Posted on: 2010-03-22 15:44 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Not to burst your bubble, but this belongs in the Suggestions forum and not in the Technical Issues and Bugs section.
Since this isn't a forum for official technical support there's nothing to be gained by posting it here.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Well, I think it's a bug with a suggestion on how to solve the problem. I also thought other people might have similar issues so I thought I'd post it where they would find it. I don't think someone looking for a solution to a problem would go to the suggestions board... 
Quote:
Logging in to your computer with a restricted user account is fine, however, there is absolutely no need from a security standpoint to run the game as that restricted user ... that is, you can be on the restricted user account but still run the game as an administrator - the only thing that will have administrator privileges is the game's processes. I'm not sure exactly what you believe you're protecting yourself against by not running the game as an administrator.|
Originally Posted by Erotimus
Well, I think it's a bug with a suggestion on how to solve the problem. I also thought other people might have similar issues so I thought I'd post it where they would find it. I don't think someone looking for a solution to a problem would go to the suggestions board...
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By virtue of the fact that you are running the game in a manner in which it was not intended to run, there really is no bug. Your ideas on how to make it work the way you want it to are, therefore, much more appropriate to the suggestions forum.
Storm
Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm ...
Quote:
Ok, now I see what you two mean about not being a bug. Still don't agree as I think any application that obviously doesn't do any administrative task shouldn't require administrative access.|
Originally Posted by PerfectStorm
Logging in to your computer with a restricted user account is fine, however, there is absolutely no need from a security standpoint to run the game as that restricted user ... that is, you can be on the restricted user account but still run the game as an administrator - the only thing that will have administrator privileges is the game's processes. I'm not sure exactly what you believe you're protecting yourself against by not running the game as an administrator.
By virtue of the fact that you are running the game in a manner in which it was not intended to run, there really is no bug. Your ideas on how to make it work the way you want it to are, therefore, much more appropriate to the suggestions forum. |
And I'm not protecting myself against CoH. As a security software developer I'm always looking for ways to firm up the security of my home computers as well, and the easiest (and actually one of the most reliable) way is to ensure that the logged on account isn't allowed to do anything dangerous to the computer.
And for not running CoH on the admin account, I don't want to enter the admin password all the time.
That aside, I just might move/copy my post to the suggestions forum anyway.
Quote:
The updater does do stuff that is administrative, when there are updates. The game is written with the intent that you will run the updater each time you want to play. The updater contacts the update server and if there is something new, downloads and installs the patches/updates. Installation of software or modifying existing software is something your restricted user account cannot do - by intent, of course - and therefore requires administrative access. Because of this, the updater itself requires administrator privileges to run. Once it has installed any patches, or determined that patches are not required, the updater then launches the game. As you've pointed out earlier, the game itself doesn't require admin privileges. The updater does, due to the nature of its function.|
Originally Posted by Erotimus
Ok, now I see what you two mean about not being a bug. Still don't agree as I think any application that obviously doesn't do any administrative task shouldn't require administrative access.
And I'm not protecting myself against CoH. As a security software developer I'm always looking for ways to firm up the security of my home computers as well, and the easiest (and actually one of the most reliable) way is to ensure that the logged on account isn't allowed to do anything dangerous to the computer. And for not running CoH on the admin account, I don't want to enter the admin password all the time. That aside, I just might move/copy my post to the suggestions forum anyway. |
Could they have written it differently? Sure. But this is their design and if you'd like them to read your suggestion on how to change it, you probably should move this to suggestions
Storm
Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm ...
Quote:
I just did the same thing last night, created an admin account, changed my account to a standard user for security reasons. I've not had any problems, except for having to enter the admin password. I acutally run Splasher/Randomizer so I have to put the password in before that will run, then it launches the updater. Haven't had to download any patches yet, so we'll see what happens when I do.|
Originally Posted by Erotimus
Ok, now I see what you two mean about not being a bug. Still don't agree as I think any application that obviously doesn't do any administrative task shouldn't require administrative access.
And I'm not protecting myself against CoH. As a security software developer I'm always looking for ways to firm up the security of my home computers as well, and the easiest (and actually one of the most reliable) way is to ensure that the logged on account isn't allowed to do anything dangerous to the computer. And for not running CoH on the admin account, I don't want to enter the admin password all the time. That aside, I just might move/copy my post to the suggestions forum anyway. |
But I definitely understand your reasons for wanting to do this, I'm doing the exact same thing for security reasons. It's not about protecting myself from CoX, it's protecting myself from everything else out there...
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As long as you are willing to enter the admin password to run the updater, you should be fine, and the updater should be able to do whatever it needs to do. |
Originally Posted by SkyRocker
I just did the same thing last night, created an admin account, changed my account to a standard user for security reasons. I've not had any problems, except for having to enter the admin password. I acutally run Splasher/Randomizer so I have to put the password in before that will run, then it launches the updater. Haven't had to download any patches yet, so we'll see what happens when I do.
But I definitely understand your reasons for wanting to do this, I'm doing the exact same thing for security reasons. It's not about protecting myself from CoX, it's protecting myself from everything else out there... |
Just to be clear: I'm not at all being critical of people wanting to protect the security of their computers - I work in IT also, so I truly understand the concept of using a restricted account both in the technical and practical senses. All I am pointing out is that you are not going to compromise the security of your computer if you run the CoH updater as an admin whlie logged into a restricted user account. It is inconvenient to enter the admin password every time you want to play the game. Not unlike when I play WoW and have to enter not only my game password, but then press the button on my authenticator and key in the generated six digit code... but I do it for the security of my account, having had it stolen once already (I was an unfortunate victim of a clever phishing scheme - there was nothing found installed on my computer after multiple scans with various malware detection products, including several root-kit scanning applications).
I do get it.
Storm
Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm ...
There is really no reason for it to run restricted, but if you want to hype up the security of your computer you could always run the client sandboxed using Sandboxie or similar. Then you will make a virtual enviorment for your client to play in and it doesnt affect the critical parts of your computer.
Easiest solution to your restriction problem.
For security reasons I would like to run CoH from an account with user privileges, that is, not an administrator. What follows below is a description of the issues with this and my solution to the problem.
For normal play I start the game with the "-project eucoh" trick which works just fine. When there's an update though... That is where the trouble starts.
As the default user isn't an administrator I have to run the CoHUpdater as a different user, no problem there (right click and "Run as Administrator"), the updater starts and here's the first gotcha, it asks for the game directory even though I've had the game several years using the same updater (no, I haven't had any of the difficulties described in the other thread about the updater).
What happended is that as all settings for CoH is stored in the user section of the registry the adminstrator account doesn't know which folder the game is stored in. Easy fix, just select the same folder as before and download the patch.
When the patch is downloaded I quit the updater and doubleclicked on my normal game icon (the one with -project eucoh) and the game starts just fine. Until I select server... Gotcha number 2, even though the patch was downloaded and installed correctly the game STILL thinks I'm running the old version. WTF? Ok, after some digging I found that the game version is also stored in the user section of the registry. Some manual copying of registry values (HKEY_USERS\S-X-X-XX-XXXXX\Software\Cryptic\EUCoh\CurrentVersion to be more exact) from the admin account to the user account and it all works again.
None of this would have been an issue if the updater was possible to run as a user and didn't require administrative rights. (All other MMO's I've tried can do this, why can't CoH?) Part of the problem here is that the updater must be called CoHUpdater.EU.exe if one would like connect to the EU servers. Vista and Win 7 detect the word "update" (stupid MS) in the filename and automatically assumes it needs admin rights and simply refuses to run it otherwise. US players can change the name as the US server cluster is default, us EU players don't have that luxury.
What can NCSoft do to help?
1) Stop using the user registry to store global information like game version and path. There are probably other information that shouldn't be user specific either but I haven't really looked into it.
2) Stop using the name of the updater executable to decide which server to connect to. Let us either select using a command line argument or pop up a dialog box with the choice. (Or even better, merge the server clusters, but that's a completely different issue)
Ok, this isn't as clear as I'd like it to be, but it's late.