Why must VA run as admin user?

[arwkin]

Background:
I've been using Voice Attack with the Elite Dangerous EDDI tool for almost a year with no problems. I upgraded VA and/or EDDI as needed over the past year, so I've stayed current with the latest versions that work together.  System: Windows 10 pro 64 bit.  I ran everything above using a standard user, not as an admin user.  This Windows 10 installation is only used for Elite Dangerous (and a few utilities), so it is a relatively clean system.
NOTE: I never have needed to launch VA as admin for it to work up until recently...

Last week, I needed to reinstall Windows 10 (same specs as above) to move everything to an SSD drive.  Now VA doesn't work correctly unless I launch it with the admin user.  I first tried VA 1.5.12.14(beta) then 1.6.1. 

Any idea why VA worked without using the admin user on my previous installation and is there a fix for my new Win 10 install? :-)   

I know I can run VA using the admin user, but apparently, as the admin user I will need to retrain the speech recognition engine, setup my default TTS voice, and reconfigure EDDI; maybe something else I'm forgetting.  Those aren't too difficult to do again, but I'd love to find a solution to avoid doing that. Since it did work for me with my previous Win 10 install, a solution exists. I still have the old Win 10 installation if there are any questions as to what was/is installed, etc.

Thanks.

[Gangrel]

It all boils down to what security level the application that you are trying to interact with runs.

Programs that reside in the "program files" (and a few other locations) have a higher security level than those that are located outside of them. As a result, windows will prevent apps with a lower rating interact (ie pass information to/keypress etc etc) with those of a higher rating (Higher rating apps can interact with those of a lower rating).

Now having said that, I personally don't have to run VA as admin for ED, but that is because I don't have Elite in its "default" location (steam is installed to C drive, Steam Games are on D and E drive)

[arwkin]

Do you mean VA is not installed in program files? I have Elite installed in c:\games\ and VA installed in program files for both of my win10 installations.

[Gangrel]

Do you mean VA is not installed in program files? I have Elite installed in c:\games\ and VA installed in program files for both of my win10 installations.

If you right click the VA executable, you can set it to run as Admin in the permissions tab. Sure, you get the UAC warning/notification each time you launch Voice Attack, but you should be fine though with it them (as VA is just working on the information that the Windows Speech relays to it

[arwkin]

Any idea why VA worked without using the admin user on my previous installation and is there a fix for my new Win 10 install? :-)   

Does anyone know the answer to this question?

[Gary]

The answer is because if a target application is run in a higher security context than the source, Windows will block input if that input is sent through API calls.  This is a good thing, because let's say you somehow acquire a rogue piece of software that now wants to control an application that you've given full rights to.  The rogue software can now interact with that software and cause all sorts of bad things to happen.

Also, I've never had to retrain my speech engine because I ran software as an administrator.  Not sure what's up with your setup if that's going on.


Just a note, in case it's not clear for others reading along...  You don't have to log into the account of THE administrator.  Your account needs to have admin rights and you simply right-click on the application and select, 'run as an administrator' (or go through the compatibility menu under properties). 

Does that clear things up?

[arwkin]

Does that clear things up?

<= In this space I had explained my question a bit more and was about to post it, however, I then decided to try removing the EDDI plugin to see if that was the cause of the issue. Removing the EDDI plugin solved the problem! 

For anyone following this thread, the EDDI 2.0.13 VA plugin was causing VoiceAttack to require me to run it as an admin user.  I thought I had the same version of EDDI installed on my previous Win10 installation, but I later verified that it was EDDI 2.0.11.

Thanks for your time!