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Why does Firefox trigger the UAC warning each time I open it?

  • 3 replies
  • 11 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I design websites and test them across most browsers. We use Windows 7 operating system, and only Firefox triggers the User Account Control message on our test computers, which is a major annoyance when opening instances of Firefox in rapidfire order as web designers do. Is there a way to disable it? The UAC is not triggered by Opera, Safari, Chrome and we have made sure we have not checked properties-compatibility tab - "Run this program as administrator" in both the Firefox.exe file as well as any desktop shortcuts - as advised by several people and contributors to Firefox forums. But that doesn't have an effect. Each time we test, we get the Windows 7 UAC message. We've written to Microsoft several times and they have not replied. We thought perhaps you'd have a solution that actually works.

Thanks

I design websites and test them across most browsers. We use Windows 7 operating system, and only Firefox triggers the User Account Control message on our test computers, which is a major annoyance when opening instances of Firefox in rapidfire order as web designers do. Is there a way to disable it? The UAC is not triggered by Opera, Safari, Chrome and we have made sure we have not checked properties-compatibility tab - "Run this program as administrator" in both the Firefox.exe file as well as any desktop shortcuts - as advised by several people and contributors to Firefox forums. But that doesn't have an effect. Each time we test, we get the Windows 7 UAC message. We've written to Microsoft several times and they have not replied. We thought perhaps you'd have a solution that actually works. Thanks

All Replies (3)

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You can try to uninstall and reinstall Firefox to see if that helps.

  • Uninstall your current Firefox version and remove the Firefox program folder before installing that copy of the Firefox installer.
  • Don't remove personal data when uninstalling.
  • It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
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I reinstalled first without deleting everything and then as you suggested. The program now comes up ok when I log in as administrator. However, it is the only program I have that suddenly won't work as a non-administrator without requesting that the administrator approve it to make changes to my computer. I have looked at the permissions and they are the same as for WordPerfect, for example. I don't expect that this program makes changes to my computer that will bother any other users.

Why does Windows 7 think that Firefox is going to change the computer for other users?

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There may be files in the VirtualStore folder if the permissions are correct and you also do not run the program as Administrator.
You can try to delete the Mozilla Firefox folder in VirtualStore folder if it contains files.

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\updates

You may need to run Firefox once as Administrator in the user account to make Windows update files properly.

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