Administrator in the title

[j7n]

I wonder why Total Commander on my Windows Server 2022 computer shows Administrator^ in the title, but on Windows Server 2008 R2 it does not. I believe I have disabled User Account Control in both. But maybe not fully. It works fine either way. But I'm curious about the title.

[Dalai]

The circumflex (and the username) is added if the following registry value doesn't exist (or is not equal to zero):

Code: Select all

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"EnableLUA"=dword:00000000

This value is a system-wide policy setting telling the system whether or not UAC is enabled. Changing the UAC level in Windows control panel doesn't set or change this value.

[ADD]
The username and circumflex are also shown if TC is launched explicitely as administrator, as Ghisler pointed out below. I assumed this fact to be already known. And since we're talking about Windows Server OS here, it could be there's only this one user (admin) account.
[/ADD]

[ghisler(Author)]

"Administrator^" is shown when Total Commander runs with elevated rights (full admin rights, e.g. by launching it via right click - As Administrator). It's a warning that you can modify files in protected directories like the windows directory or "Program Files" without elevation prompt.

[j7n]

Yes, the registry key directly affects this without a reboot. Seems that Microsoft may have switched to the UAC disablement per-user. On Windows 2008 ("Seven") I didn't need to modify the registry.

[Dalai]

UAC is either enabled system-wide or disabled system-wide. There is no per-user setting, not even via Windows control panel (wouldn't make sense either). Changing the EnableLUA value requires a reboot to take effect to the system. TC might detect it immediately and show the change in the title bar, but the system behavior is unchanged until a reboot.

AFAIK the EnableLUA value is unchanged since Vista.

[j7n]

I disabled it somewhere in the GUI or group policy, I don't remember where. The result was that there were no prompts when launching admin-only software like regedit. Yes, I meant that TC detected it immediately, which confirms what you said above that it looks at this key specifically.

Edit:

I see now. I had this policy, which didn't fully disable UAC.

User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
Elevate without prompting.
(ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin = 0)