Last Updated on December 4, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
Let me preface this by saying that the best protection we’ve found for XP based systems is that users do all recreational surfing and email reading from a limited user account, not an account with administrator rights. We try to set up our home based clients especially so that the kids are running as limited users. That has been over 99% effective in stopping virus and trojan attacks.
The other day we were working with a client who had purchased a new Kodak camera for her son. The computer running XP would not see the camera. We were getting a ‘device not recognized” error. I tried doing a repair install of Easyshare and then a complete reinstall. It still wouldnt’ recognize the camera.
I got a suspicion that maybe it just wouldn’t run on a non admin account. After a few minutes of searching I found a bunch of threads confirming that. Kodak’s advice to people is to “Just run as an administrator”.. Great, just because your software can’t run under a limited user account, just remove the best safety device ever. Here’s some similar thinking
- Put a real copper penny in under the fuse in your fusebox and you’ll never have blown fuses again (of course, your wiring in your walls will glow and burn your house down)
- If the relief valve on your water heater keeps popping, just pull it out and replace it with a solid plug (Just don’t be in the house when it swells up like that eddie murphy character and goes booooooooomm)
- If the smoke alarm keeps beeping, just remove the batteries (So that when there is a real fire you can roast to death)
I did come across a list of applications that require you to be an adminstrator to run but unfortunately I can’t find it again.
I absolutely refuse to compromise the security of client’s systems to run what is essentially a non essential piece of software. If Kodak thinks having a sytem with 11, 9 and 7 year old boys running as administrators is OK, then let them do that with their machines.
The work around was pretty simple. I had an 11 in 1 card reader in my laptop bag. I gave that to the client and showed the 11 yo who owned the camera how to download the pictures. He learned the whole process in about two minutes.
What concerns me is how many people out there are blindly following Kodak’s advice to “Just run as an administrator?”
It will be interesting to see if the situation improves under Vista or not.
I agree this software is not only a royal Pain in the Ass for the above average user, it is absurd they cannot write this stuff to allow limited users drop pics into the shared folder.
Ref my previous comments – forgot to say that those issues were with XP – there is no admin rights issue when I run Easyshare on my other computer with Vista…..
I cannot agree more with the original comments. I have had a NIGHTMARE with Kodak Easyshare – when it works it’s great, but when something goes wrong it’s awful. I thought uninstalling and reinstalling would solve the many problems I had but using the KodakClear facility resulted in losing my DVD drive because Arcsoft – a Kodak related program – was one of the drivers for my DVD and KodakClear removed that along with all the other drivers. I had to do a system restore to recover them, then spend 4 hours (yes FOUR HOURS) in the phone with Kodak to sort out the rest of the problems, which included “Easyshare has encountered a problem and has to close” and HomeCenter saying it was missing a file called center.msi and refusing to work. Kodak blamed Microsoft for the missing .msi file but finally agreed that it wasn’t their fault at all. They also said that KodakClear could not have removed my DVD driver but I proved it could while they were on the phone and had to do a system restore while they waited. They the took me through a process to reinstall the hardware, which had by this time vanished altogether. All the registry entries for Kodak had to be removed and re-written under their guidance because I got to the point where it would no longer unistall or reinstall, and although it said it had uninstalled, all the files were still there etc etc etc …. and in the end nothing would work, including my DVD combo. Finally got it going again and then the dreaded Admin rights issue arose, so more handwringing as to what to do. As the original post said, DO NOT grant admin rights just to run this program. I know this rant is all a bit convoluted but it all started with trying to use a USB switch to link the Kodak printer to two computers – fatal. It messed up HomeCenter. Crocked everything else up that was in any way linked to the printer. This despite my asking Kodak if this would work OK and them saying yes, only for them to change their minds later. .. Why this should mess things up I don’t know, but the point of this diatribe is that to go through all of this and then be told I have to grant admin rights to anyone wanting to use it is just plain ludicrous. 19 hours trying to fix the problems – Thanks Kodak!!! Forgive the length of this – I just feel the need to warn people that it may just not be worth it in the end, what with this Admin rights problem on top of everything else.
o my good lord i just bought this camera i cant upload anything to fb this sux majorly im stressed over it and i am just about to throw the thing out a window