App-V: RunAsAdmin, an ACTUAL workaround.

If you've used App-V for very long at all chances are you've discovered that it doesn't really handle applications that need admin rights with UAC prompting very well.

There are two problems, the first is the AppCompat layer, it doesn't except arguments, so you CAN right click the shortcut for an application and set it to run as admin, thinking it will run "sfttray.exe" "Application Name 1.0" as admin, but in reality it only sees sfttray.exe, meaning you just set ALL your applications to RunAsAdmin. Which if locked down now means only administrators can run appv apps, or, if you have admin rights, you've just mooted the entire point of UAC and may as well just turn it off.

The second problem is, App-V was not built with ANY real intelligence when it comes to elevation. They say it's a "design choice" but then say a design choice is their way of saying they know it can't do it yet but they didn't have enough time to fix it. I guess they were too busy introducing bugs and useless UI fixes in SP1 to bother.

So given their two "workarounds" are, well, ones flat out not a workaround because you'd have to be an idiot to do it (and even they say only do it for testing, which...makes it not a workaround) and the other involes installing one of the WORST "powertoys" I've ever used (including over 30 files you need to push locally to the machine) I finally came up with what I would call an ACTUAL workaround.

Ready?

Copy sfttray.exe, rename it to sfttrayad.exe, point your shortcut for the App-V Console or whatever else to IT and not sfttray.exe, and set the compatability to Run As Administrator.

Now anything you know needs admin rights to run simply modify the shortcut, adding "ad" to the end of "sfttray" and tada...no more right click runas, no more shift+right click if it's on your taskbar.

Dear App-V guys. I don't even really care if you can't figure out a better solution, but surely even implementing something like this (where a flag in the admin console tells the client to point to a different copy of sfttray if you specify it as needing admin rights) is better than NOTHING.