What makes the UAC shield icon appear on the “Edit” permissions button

uac

When I right click on a folder and choose properties and then Security tab, sometimes the "Edit" button does have UAC shield icon and sometimes it does not.

This is happening on the same machine when logged as an administrator
both folders (one that does give the icon and one that does not) are owned by the Administrators group
both folders has Full Control permission for the Administrators group.

What are possible reasons that one of this folder has the shield on the Edit button and the other does not?

This is Windows Server 2008 R2

Edit 1:
The folders that I'm looking at are not "special" folders, they are created by a piece of software that I wrote, do not have any "special" attributes applied or extra registry settings "attached" to them.

Best Answer

This is determined by your current permissions on the folder.If your user or the built in users group have full permissions on the folder you can change permissions on it as normal.

If your user and the users group does not have the Full Control permission you won't be allowed to change any permissions on the folder. This is where the shield icon comes in. To be able to change the permissions you need to elevate your account to Administrator to have the necessary rights to change permissions.

You can easily try how the permissions change when the shield is displayed.

If you deny yourself write access on a folder, then when you right click it you will see the shield icon in front of the rename option.

If you deny yourself modify access on a folder, then when you right click it you will see the shield icon in front of the delete and rename options.

Related Solutions

Windows – How does Windows 7 know to add the UAC shield to some shortcuts

There are a few ways it can know. Generally it will put the UAC icon there anytime clicking the icon will result in a UAC prompt confirmation. However, you may not always see it because after a recent change, the icon cache won't immediately be updated.

The ways it knowns:

It knows because you modify the shortcut, or the application compatibility properties,or
because the application has alerted the OS that it requires admin priviledge.

What you are probably seeing... In the shortcut properties "advanced..." button dialog, choosing run as administrator will make the sheild appear (after your icon cache is refreshed.) The same thing with "run as administrator" setting on the compatibility tab. (again, after the icon cache is refreshed.) How to force a refresh of your icon cache in windows 7, you ask? I'm not sure... a reboot should do it.)

Windows can also know to put the UAC icon there to begin with because an app that is "ready" for (is programmed to behave well with) UAC, can let the OS know that it needs admin permissions, this can be done through a "manifest" that is embeded into the exe.

Windows – How to Remove UAC Icon Overlays (Blue-Yellow Shields) in Windows 7

After days of trying various methods, I believe I've found the ultimate solution to remove that annoying shield icon; it's not difficult and works perfectly for me.

The following procedure removes the shield overlay only from icons and Start Menu items, but will not be removed from Control Panel applets and context menus.

Disable UAC [User Account Control] by moving its slider to the lowest position
Open Command Prompt (you'll find it in the Start Menu)
Execute the following, pressing Enter after each line:
```
TaskKill /IM "Explorer.exe" /F
Cd /D "%LocalAppData%"
Del "IconCache.db" /A
Shutdown /R
```
- Last command will restart the computer, so ensure you save your work before executing
- If experiencing the shield icon again, execute the above again

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – How does Windows 7 know to add the UAC shield to some shortcuts

Windows – How to Remove UAC Icon Overlays (Blue-Yellow Shields) in Windows 7

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