Auto running Secunia PSI under a non-admin user

Topic

New Reply

Under XP I happily used Secunia PSI to check for patches and every so often, an alert popped up to warn me something needed patching. Fine – except for an occasional false positive.

When I upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, I followed best practice and (unlike my XP setup which just had 1 admin user), set up 2 users on Win7:- one admin user for restricted, occasional use; one non-admin user for daily use. I installed Secunia PSI again to check for necessary patches and set it to “Start PSI on boot”. However, when I log in with my normal user, Secunia PSI is not running. I want PSI to run no matter which user I’ve logged on with.

If I log in on the admin user, PSI starts and is visible. If I log in on the non-admin user, PSI does not start and is not visible. I have NOT suppressed the PSI notifications in the System Tray.

When I check in Task Scheduler, the Secunia PSI Logon task security options say
– Use the admin user account.
– run only when that user is logged on
The trigger for this task is “At log on of any user”.

I’m no expert on this, but the trigger and the security options seem to make no sense in combination. As a result, PSI does not run most of the time – which isn’t much use for getting notifications – and possibly suppresses the auto full scan as well (not sure).

Someone on the Secunia forum said that Secunia PSI needs to run as an admin user and suggested I instead sign up for mail notifications from them and manually run PSI when something _might_ affect my set-up. This seems to defeat the whole point of an automatic scan and tailored notification.

Anyone know if it’s possible to make Secunia PSI run in a useful manner – i.e. automatically, on logon of any user?

Thanks

Reply | Quote

Replies

Anyone know if it’s possible to make Secunia PSI run in a useful manner – i.e. automatically, on logon of any user?

At System Requirements – PSI – Consumer – Products[/url] it very clearly states that Secunia PSI requires administrative privileges to install and run.

You can try changing the task scheduler entry to select “Run whether user is logged on or not”. Also, make sure “Run with highest privileges” is checked.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

You can try changing the task scheduler entry to select “Run whether user is logged on or not”. Also, make sure “Run with highest privileges” is checked.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work. I changed the scheduler to say “Run whether user is logged on or not” and made sure “Run with highest privileges” was checked, as Joe suggested. Nothing started – I checked with Task Manager set to show all users’ processes. I also tried putting PSI in the Startup of my non-admin user, marked up to run as an admin-user, in the hope that it would ask for for the admin user’s password – again, nothing happened.

So either I’m missing something or PSI is checking how it’s running and refusing to start fully. I would not be at all surprised if that were the case since they need to do something to distinguish the free version from the paid-for commercial one. (That’s not a complaint, by the way).

So unless someone else knows a way, I’m reduced to starting the thing manually (and supplying the admin user’s password) when I remember. Which tends to destroy the point of “protecting the world” if people have to do things.

Reply | Quote

As I posted before, Secunia clearly states that admin privileges are required to install and run PSI. Is that your thread I saw in the PSI forum? They are not very encouraging. Sorry, I’m out of ideas

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Sorry, I’m out of ideas

Yes – that was me. As you say, Secunia are clear it needs to run under admin, but I was vaguely hoping someone might have a “least worst” way of doing it, e.g. scheduling it automatically but me having to input the password for the admin user each time. Doesn’t seem like I can find even that, so I’m having to remember to fire it up manually – which I’ll forget to do sooner or later. All this just makes me realise how much easier stuff like this was at work….

Thanks for your thoughts Joe

Reply | Quote