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ramensoftware / windhawk

The customization marketplace for Windows programs: https://windhawk.net/
https://windhawk.net
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Windhawk breaks admin access #22

Open nmbell opened 1 year ago

nmbell commented 1 year ago

After installing Windhawk, I can no longer access any app or process that requires admin rights, including Windhawk itself. As Windhawk runs on startup by default, I can't open or exit the app, or use any other method to end it. I get errors like the following: 2022-10-30 01 2022-10-30 02 2022-10-30 03 2022-10-30 04 2022-10-30 05 Is there any way to kill Windhawk or at least prevent it from starting?

m417z commented 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the answer is that you'll need to reboot in safe mode and disable the Windhawk service. You can follow online guides, e.g. this one for disabling a service.

That's an unpleasant issue I'd like to get fixed. Do you have a way to reproduce it? Can you say which mods you're using? I encountered it once on a test Windows 7 machine, but it was caused because of a bug in the "Slick Window Arrangement" mod which I believed was fixed.

In addition to (hopefully) fixing it, I'll look into adding a mitigation which allows to exit Windhawk without requiring admin rights.

nmbell commented 1 year ago

The mods I had selected were:

I wasn't able to reboot in safe mode, because it's a work laptop (yeah, I rolled the dice, lol). I was able to resolve, though, by killing the process with... Task Manager. Which makes me look a bit of a fool, because somebody from IT Helpdesk had to suggest that to me. For some reason, it couldn't be killed with Process Explorer 🤷. Anyway, having killed the process, I was able to remove the program files and registry entry, and stop the service from starting automatically. Back to square one.

I don't have my own laptop with Windows 11 yet, so to avoid being twice foolish, I'm going to hold off on re-installing for now. No disrespect to you or your product. I've been using 7TT for years, and love it, which is what brought me to Windhawk in the first place. Really, I wish that Microsoft would just build a UI that let you have it how you want it. But they don't, so people like me have to rely on people like you in order to retain a full head of hair. I'll be back for sure...

m417z commented 1 year ago

I was able to resolve, though, by killing the process with... Task Manager

I was afraid that Task Manager won't be able to start, too, as it requires admin rights as well. Great that it worked.

In Windhawk v1.0, I added an option to exit Windhawk without admin rights by holding Shift, right clicking on the tray icon and choosing to force exit. It can be used in cases like this.

I'll leave the issue open since it's probably still an issue that can happen. If you have any other information or find a way to reproduce it, please let me know.