Showing about box as Administrator from a limited account

I am using XP. I installed avast yesterday and tried to insert the license key today. Experienced avast people know that I must use Administrator privileges to insert the license key. The account I usually use does not have Administrator privileges.

I am familiar with the RunAs command. I would like to use it to insert the license key. I was told to execute “ashdisp.exe and right click the icon”. The problem with that is that either I misunderstand, or, prior to executing ashdisp, there is already an icon in the taskbar notification area and therefore it is not possible for avast to show a second one.

Okay, I already have an answer. There is an icon on my desktop for ashAvast.exe. When I right-click it, in the context menu is a “Run as …” menu item. I don’t know if that menu item exists in all XP installations but if I use that to execute ashAvast.exe as an Administrator, avast immediately asks for the license key. The “Run as …” menu item probably is created by PowerTools. For everyone else, I think it would work to execute ashAvast.exe from the RunAs command console.

You can logon as the admin and insert the key from there.

To temporarily disable the avast self defense module:

  1. Right click the ‘a’ blue icon on system tray.
  2. Programs settings > Troubleshooting (tab)
  3. Disable self defense module
  4. Then, kill ashdisp.exe process
  5. Runas ashdisp.exe and insert the key.

Another way to get it…

I am sorry that I did hot explain that I know that and I was asking for a way to get the about box from a limited account.

That is extremely bad advice. Killing a process must be avoided and should be done only as a last resort. It is one thing for someone to kill a process themself when they know what they are doing or whatever, but it is not good to advise someone else to kill a process as a normal procedure, especially beginners. Killing software such as antivirus software, even if it is just a support program, is bad. I sure hope the vendor is not suggesting to do that.

You don’t have another solution for the icon on system tray.
It’s not an extremely bad advice… it’s a harmless process, you’re killing an icon on system tray… not the antivirus protection (ashserv.exe).

What does that mean?

There is no such thing as killing an icon. What you mean to say is kill the process that the icon is for. When a process is killed, the process does not have the opportunity to do any termination. There are very many potential problems with that. It can cause memory leaks in common memory, which is a limited resource. That can cause problems in the system until the system is restarted. I must emphasize that when Windows kills a process, it does not (can not) clean up everything.

When using the Task Manager, it is better to use the Applications tab to end a process than the Processes tab, since the Applications tab will first attempt to send a close (WM_CLOSE) to the application (actually the process’s top-level window), allowing the process to close itself and do all it’s termination. if the process does not exit, then it kills the process. The Processes tab just kills the process, without the opportunity to close normally.

See Microsoft KB article 178893 (“HOWTO: Terminate an Application “Cleanly” in Win32”) for the programmer’s explanation of the above. KB article 175030 (“HOWTO: Enumerate Applications in Win32”) has a bit more of relevant information.

I’m not saying that killing ashDisp.exe isn’t a crude thing to do - but what’s “common memory”? I can imagine the process doesn’t clean its temp files (when killed), but I’m not familiar with any “common memory” for Win32 processes.

Yes, “common memory” is not the correct terminology. Windows programmers need to understand the concept of common memory though.

There is something called a GDI Heap and Windows programmers need to know how to handle GDI Objects so that they get freed when not needed; if not, then they can persist after a process ends. Killing a process does not allow the process the opportunity to free GDI Objects. Windows users need to know that there are peices of applications that are not freed when an application is killed.

There is also Global Memory. It is used for many purposes, including data for controls (such as edit controls (text boxes)) that (first) existed in 16-bit Windows. I don’t know how much of Global Memory can and cannot be freed when a process is killed, but it could be a substantial amount of memory.

I do kill processes when I have to, but only when I have to.