New
#470
Some weird things
I've just had some weird experiences with all of this and maybe you can tell me what is going on with it.
First, I followed this Task Manager - Create Elevated Shortcut tutorial to create a shortcut that launches an elevated Task Manager without the UAC prompt. It works great. But when I put it in my Startup folder, it's completely ignored. I can reboot all day (something I have unfortunately been doing lately, as you can read all about in another thread elsewhere, but which, blessedly, is no longer the case) and it won't launch Task Manager at boot up. However, it is a convenient item I have kept in my Startup folder for reasons I will get to below.
So then I SLAVISHLY followed your instructions for this tutorial, thus proving that it is a letter perfect description of everything you will see if you follow the instructions. However, I ended up with something that also didn't launch Task Manager at bootup. However squared, if I execute the entry in my Startup folder once I wait long enough to be sure it isn't going to launch on its own, it gives me the UAC prompt. How rude. So I use the other entry in the Startup folder to launch Task Manager. This is the first instance of it being convenient to have kept that entry.
I must sidetrack for a moment to point out one step in the tutorial, step 11 to be precise, that caused me a bit of a problem for a moment. I suppose I shouldn't admit this in public but I have only one user defined in my system, it is an Administrator, and its password is blank. This is my home computer and nobody else uses it. No eager teenagers wanting to import viruses with their games, no wife wanting to run up exorbitant bills shopping online, nor any other reason to try to secure the system, other than with the lock on the front door of the home. Typing a password all the time would be so annoying. So I don't have one. This caused an error message (which I suppose I should have captured to include in this post, but sorry, I didn't) that prompted me to go into the Local Security Policy application and change the policy "Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only" to disabled. This allowed me to save the definition of the scheduled task in Task Scheduler in step 11 of the tutorial. End of sidetrack.
So I started looking closely at the definition of the started task. Why launch a command window with the program I really want to launch as a parameter of that? So I coalesced the two together. I didn't do step 8, and in step 7 I just entered taskmgr.exe directly in the "Program/script" box. Plus, at step 22, after changing the icon, I also went into Advanced and turned on the Administrator permission. I'm not sure why you don't have this step in the tutorial. Is it really unnecessary? Maybe that explains . . . Oh it does!! You're so smart, Shawn. OK. I've turned off the "Run as Administrator" attribute of the shortcut. Clearly, setting Administrator privileges in step 4 of the tutorial is enough to make it elevate. How interesting . . . I'll have to remember this concept for future reference: an unelevated shortcut can launch an elevated entry defined in the Task Scheduler. Maybe I don't need both shortcuts in my Startup folder after all.
In any case, there is still a reason for me to post this. You know, when you launch Task Manager once your system is running, you get the little green square over near the system clock in the Notification Area of the Task Bar. So even if the Task Manager itself is obscured by other windows, you can get a coarse idea of whether the CPU is busy doing something. Well, if you launch Task Manager automatically at bootup, it's so early in the process that you don't always get the little green square in the Notification Area. I pretty much never get it. Maybe it depends on the speed of your CPU. You have to close Task Manager & run the entry in the Startup folder manually to make the little green square show up. Kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise, doesn't it? So . . . I think you can see what my question is going to be.
So my thought is to create a .BAT script whose second line invokes schtasks. Its first line would be something that waits for some specified delay. Maybe 10 or 15 seconds, maybe less, like I say, it may depend on the speed of your CPU. And then put a shortcut to that in your Startup folder. I'm looking in the Command Reference . . . There is no DELAY command. That would be too easy . . . Hmm . . . There is a WAITFOR. I wonder if it works to wait for a signal that of course will never come so long as you specify a timeout . . . News soon . . .