Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

bolts — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 23:53:00 GMT

You didn't mention it explicitly, but for those trying this, name the string "debugger" if you add it manually.

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

Shawn — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 23:56:00 GMT

Good point, I meant to include that in the explanation. Thanks.

-Shawn

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

fredo — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 09:10:00 GMT

Ok for calc, but it's not the principal application I'm using.

What about VS? It is pratically impossible to build and debug an ASP application with VS without beeing admin. Yes, I know there is a lot of papers explaining how to do with a normal account (even in MSDN), except that the solution they provide does not work.
When I post in forum for that problem, I've never meet someone successully with that either. So it does not seem to be so obvious.

I even meet a PC where it was impossible to make ASP running in debug mode without giving it system privileges in machine.config ????
VS has a real problem with account privileges, at least something is not clear.

But just for my curiosity, why I should be admin to debug and not just be in the debugger group? If should be admin as well, what is the interest of the debuger group?

thank you

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

ProgLauncher Link — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 19:03:00 GMT

Or, there's ProgLauncher. Seems a lot simpler. I use this for my NotePad replacement needs, and it works great.

http://phi.lho.free.fr/softwares/PhiLhoSoft/freewares/index_en.html

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

Michael Giagnocavo — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:41:00 GMT

Hmm, cool trick. The only problem I have is that the original file is passed as a command line argument. So changing notepad to notepad2 using this registry setting ends up opening the exe each time.

And yea, I can I can replace things in dllcache and then overwrite them I know... but I don't like doing that (unless it's critical, like fixing the SP2 tcpip.sys).

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

Shawn — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:38:00 GMT

OK, one at a time here :-)

Fredo -- I don't do much web development myself, so I'm not sure how to get VS.Net to work properly as a normal user. I would check out Aaron Margosis' blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis), since Aaron tends to have a lot of information about normal user scenarios.

About ProgLauncher. This defeats one of my goals from the post. I did not want to replace the calc.exe binary itself. Sine CalcPlus.exe is a lightweight app, if I wanted to do that, I would simply replace calc.exe with CalcPlus.exe.

Michael -- yep, the original argument gets passed as a command line parameter so that the debugger knows what to debug. In this case, since we're not a debugger per se, it's not very useful. I'm not sure if there's some way to modify the command line passed to the debugger.

-Shawn

Another Fix for the Infamous Calc Problem

.Net Security Blog — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:15:00 GMT

Another Fix for the Infamous Calc Problem

.Net Security Blog — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:11:00 GMT

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

Matteo — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 05:08:34 GMT

Great FIX. May I write about this on my blog? My intention is to translate some of your post. Naturally i write about you, including the url of your work.
Are you agree?

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

shawnfa — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:54:11 GMT

Sure -- go ahead.

-Shawn

re: Replacing Calc with Calculator Plus

David S — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:53:51 GMT

FYI calc.exe was fixed in Feb 2005 to use HKCU. See, sometimes Windows bugs do get fixed :-)