Support assist Run as Admin

Still cannot find the service to run as admin that would allow SAC updater to run. The only option I've been able to get to work is to manually go the the website and download Support Assist for home and run the installer. Otherwise, if I get notified SAC has an update, clicking "YES" just closes the application and nothing happens. 

I was so happy to come across this thread! Finally, someone having the e

So frustrating as usual with Dell and Windows....Crickets...I still cannot get SA to run for our users without remote control and running as admin. Trying to run as a log-on user that is an admin doesn't seem to work anymore either. It just sits at the loading screen and complains "this is taking longer than usual". 

same problem, dell please solve the problem

I'm having the same problem.  It appears Dell ignores this forum????  

I was able to get it to work some of the time by changing the service run as user to a domain administrator. It’s finicky tho and sometimes SA will open and just sit there but sometimes it will open and I can check for updates and install them if there are any.

just go to services, right click Dell Support assist Agent, and under properties > run as choose a user. Enter full domain username (e.g example\domainBoss) and password then restart the service. Try to open SA and see if it works. 

It is industry standard best security practice for business computers to not be used by people with administrative privileges. This is why Microsoft introduced user rights escalation and the UAC subsystems in Windows almost two decades ago.

Dell are advertising and selling these systems as business computers. If Dell is designing their management software in a way that forces its customers to compromise their security, to be able to run it, then Dell are being negligent in their duty of care.

If systems are compromised because they've had to give their users admin rights, just so the systems can be maintained by Dell's own management software, then a class action, against Dell, should not be beyond the realms of possibility.

Thank goodness our management have listened to me and moved away from Dell their support, is atrocious - they returned a repaired laptop to a random address at another part of the country (which we never got back) and had months of fighting with them to get a replacement after the fact.  This support assist with local admin rights - what administrator would give users local admin rights - I hope HP will be better, though I must admit on holding my breath.

Dudes, just click the link in the opening statement...you will find a viable solution. I've tested this and it works well for my situation:

We should not have to be doing "work arounds" to compensate for poor product design/decisions by Dell.

They are clearly not keeping up with industry standard best practices for security in their product being marketed and sold to businesses.

@none101​

We should not have to be doing "work arounds" to compensate for poor product design/decisions by Dell. Also, the "work around" does not work around all problems with the product's poor design. As the OP clearly states, you cannot update the product properly even with the work around.

They are clearly not keeping up with industry standard best practices for security in their product being marketed and sold to businesses.

@deejinoz understood, and agreed (conditionally)...no comments about how SA banners as a 'home pc solution' too?

My point was to simply point out that there is a work around, regardless of how proper it is...some of the replies tend to give the impression that it is impossible to launch SA in admin mode; this is false, is all. And as I stated, it does work "for me", so I am happy to have this rather than nothing at all.

@none101 I've tried this angle as well and it seems to be working better these days. Not long ago, though, it was very inconsistent and would only work some of the time. It's also not good practice and I agree that we shouldn't need to find/use workarounds like this, but at least this can help keep things moving so thanks for sharing.

That said, it doesn't seem to fix the update issue (i.e. when running SA this way, if there is an update to SA available and I click "Yes" to install the update, SA just closes and nothing else happens). Curious if you see the same behavior?

@jalopeno​ Yes, I do. When it happens, I just grab a copy for local use and then push it to all necessary units. This doesn't happen often enough to be an issue for me...my need is for me to be able to update my remote PCs (many of them), without having to switch users (kind of breaks things that are in process, as we all know); with this workaround, I am able to remotely connect, launch and let SA do its thing for everything else it does fix and then simply disconnect when done. No switching, or rebooting required, unless needed by the updates...that's gonna happen no matter, so does not figure in, for me 

@none101​ The critical point to this whole thread and the only reason it exists is because Dell have made a poor and arguably negligent choice in their design of this support tool.

If the tool properly supported the endpoint where the users are not admins these problems, troubleshooting, workarounds and threads would not exist and Dell’s customers would not be left compromised.

@none101 thanks for confirming. 

May I ask how you are deploying? Are you downloading the latest installer from Dell and then using Group Policy or SCCM or something to install the new version? 

I have decided to transition to Support Assist for Business PC's which I'm trying to deploy via Intune. It's a bit tricky as there is a dependency on a runtime that needs to be installed separately. That seems to be installing OK but the Support Assist FBPC's is failing for about 2/3'rds of the machines. I'm hoping that the business version will work better for admins but I guess that remains to be seen.