Mute button causes UAC prompt

[timber]

I have a Toshiba A300 laptop (previously ran Vista 32 bit, now running Win 7 64 bit).

The laptop has a row of media controls above the keyboard. The controls work fine, except the "mute" button, which when pressed first caused UAC to pop a permission window. When I check "yes" to allow, the speakers mute.

But I don't want UAC to always be prompting me whenever I want to mute the speakers - but I do want UAC enabled in general.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[seekermeister]

I don't know of any way to exclude any particular function from UAC, but have you tried using a lower setting than what you are using?

 

[timber]

Yep - I tried a lower setting - but it is my wife's PC and I have her set up as a user not admin. As a user I can't lower her UAC low enough to get the prompts to stop. As an Admin (on my account) I have the UAC set one notch above "Never Notify" and there is no problem - but again, hers is one notch higher than the Admin setting and I can't seem to adjust it lower.

Anyway, even if I could adjust it lower, I would rather solve the problem than make a global change to UAC in order to accommodate one situation.

 

[seekermeister]

From what I have been able to Google, you have two choices...either to live with the problem, or disable UAC.

 

[timber]

Thanks for checking - I appreciate the thoughts. Kind of frustrating that MS would design a system in which the Admin cannot disable UAC for a specific program. It defeats the objective of UAC when people disable it out of frustration.

 

[seekermeister]

A philosophy the I saw cited in one place about that, is that MS wanted a ridgid system that would force software developers to write their programs to adhere to. Right or wrong, I would look for a different driver to use.

 

[timber]

I had a thought - I can use Toshiba's "button utility" to assign functions to various media buttons. If I could find the Win 7 file that activates speaker muting (as opposed to Toshiba's mute file) I could assign the mute button to call the Win 7 mute function instead of the Toshiba mute function. I doubt that would cause a UAC prompt.

The question is - where might the Windows 7 mute file reside?

Any thoughts? Thanks!

 

[seekermeister]

Maybe you can make a shortcut to the mute, and route your button utility to that:

Create a Shortcut to Mute the System Volume in Windows 7

 

[timber]

Strange - the problem resolved itself. Perhaps UAC is smart enough to change prompt levels for applications that are repeatedly "accepted" by the user.