Username prefix in titlebar no longer functioning.

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 02:27 UTC

I've used Total Commander for quite some time now. Until about two days ago the titlebar was always prefixed with username when using the RunAs feature of Win2k. When logged in as Administrator and I RunAs another user, the titlebar is still prefixed with that username. However, when logged in as a user aside from Administrator and I RunAs another user, the titlebar is not prefixed with that username.

sqa_wizard · Post by *sqa_wizard » 2006-06-26, 07:02 UTC

AFAIK this happens for users which have never loged-on to the computer (no profile created yet) ...

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 12:08 UTC

This is not the case here. I've logged on using both the admin and normal user accounts on this machine for quite some time now.

Lefteous · Post by *Lefteous » 2006-06-26, 12:15 UTC

2ice-nine
Do you use an alternate desktop instead of Explorer.exe?

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 13:06 UTC

Yes I do, it's called Aston. However, this has never been a problem in the past, and I've used Aston and Total Commander together for years. I did try switching back to using explorer as my shell, and ran into the same behavior.

Lefteous · Post by *Lefteous » 2006-06-26, 13:19 UTC

2ice-nine
Well these "it worked fine until now but not anymore questions" are quite difficult to answer. You changed something and we have to find out what it is...

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 13:33 UTC

Lefteous, I've figured it out I believe. I use COMODO Personal firewall, which monitors and analyzes executables and dynamic link libraries... much like ZoneAlarm. There was a recent update to COMODO, and I suspected this was where the problem lies. I uninstalled COMODO, and voilla username prefixes are back. So esentially the problem isn't that I changed something, but that one of the software authors that I'm a client of changed something. It's a good thing that COMODO is free. Now I will try to trace what registry value or dynamic link library is being altered, so that I can have both a firewall app and the very useful username prefix. This should be fun. Thanks for listening.

szlori · Post by *szlori » 2006-06-26, 14:57 UTC

*** OT ***
ice-nine,
You mentioned COMODO... Besides this glitch with TC, how do you find it?
I currently don't have a personal firewall favorite, so I'm looking for alternatives.
Is it powerfull like ZoneAlarm Pro, can you configure port forwarding and all the stuff a personal firewall should do?
Is it actively maintained?
Thanks,
Lori

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2006-06-26, 15:36 UTC

What I do to find out if the user name is different than the logged-on user:
- Get the Window handle of the Shell_TrayWnd.
- Check if the security descriptor is the same.

Apparently Comodo prevents TC from reading the object security of the shelltray window...

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 18:00 UTC

szlori,
COMODO is great aside from my previously mentioned gripe, which is a very valuable feature of TC. I login as a standard user, but often times need to access features of other accounts as well as the administrative account. The username titlebar prefix makes it easy to tell which account each TC instance is logged in as. I don't know if I will continue with COMODO or switch to ZoneAlarm. it's possible that this issue with COMODO will be resolved in future versions.

PS: with COMODO one can create very specific rules for ports, hosts, applications, and any combination of the three.

ice-nine · Post by *ice-nine » 2006-06-26, 18:04 UTC

ghisler(Author),
I guess when logged in as admin TC is able to circumvent COMODO's restrictions. Can a user change a file permission or security policy to facilitate a COMODO workaround for non-admin accounts?

szlori · Post by *szlori » 2006-06-28, 03:25 UTC

ice-nine wrote:szlori,
COMODO is great aside from my previously mentioned gripe, which is a very valuable feature of TC. I login as a standard user, but often times need to access features of other accounts as well as the administrative account. The username titlebar prefix makes it easy to tell which account each TC instance is logged in as. I don't know if I will continue with COMODO or switch to ZoneAlarm. it's possible that this issue with COMODO will be resolved in future versions.

PS: with COMODO one can create very specific rules for ports, hosts, applications, and any combination of the three.

Thanks, ice-nine.
Meanwhile I also checked around and found this in PCMag.
It definitely looks good, so I'll give it a try.