Admin Rights Hall Of Shame and Complaint Abuses

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of Nobeltec's Tides and Currents software. Nobeltec is a subsidiary of Jeppesen, well known for their aviation, and apparently now also marine, navigation charts. I was told this software was by far the best way to analyze currents for diving purposes.

When I received the software and stuck the installer disk into my Windows XP SP2 machine the installer was correctly identified by the operating system, and the dialog whether I want to run this installer as a different user popped up, as it should since I was running as a limited user. I gave it administrative credentials and it installed the software. Now I went to the start menu to run it, but did not find Tides and Currents. Instead I found something called "E-Chart Planner." However, E-Chart Planner did not actually work because my license did not include any of the charts for it. Tides and Currents seemed to be nowhere to be found. Eventually I located a binary called "tides32.exe" which seemed like it might be it. However, when I ran that, it told me I only had a license to use this for a single user, and that my trying to run it was a violation of that license.

None of this made sense, so I logged on as an administrator (the one that installed the software) and now I found Tides and Currents on the Start menu, right under the Windows Update icon. That icon was apparently installed under the user's profile, not under all users. The link went to tides32.exe, and if you clicked it, the software ran. This is when I contacted Nobeltec support to find out what was going on.

It turns out that the E-Chart Planner is a "bonus" software that you get, which does not actually run unless you spend around $500 on charts for it. It, however, had its links installed in the All Users profile. Tides and Currents itself was only installed in the profile of the user that installed the software. The reason tides32.exe did not work before was that it will not run as a non-administrator. At this point I have not run the app under LUA Buglight yet to see why, but I really don't think that is my job.

By now I had a nearly useless message back from the support department where they basically just told me what the E-Chart Planner software was and how much it would cost me. I responded by asking how to make Tides and Currents run as a non-administrator. After a couple of days I got a response back that said "This software needs to be installed and run under and[sic] Administrator account in Windows." After another round of e-mail I found out that "Unfortunately I am unable to answer your questions regarding the need to be logged in as administrator. I can only describe how the software functions."

I now asked for a refund. The support department told me to contact sales, so I sent a message to the Sales department. After a week, I got a response, in the form of a newsletter advertising an upgrade to some other software Nobeltec sells! Thank you, but I will probably never spend money on a Nobeltec product again!

Nobeltec is not only ignoring my request for information on how to return their flawed software, they are using my messages to them with those requests to fatten up their spam lists! This is obviously unethical, but would not be illegal if it weren't because their newsletter is not compliant with the CAN-SPAM act - it does not contain a physical address for the sender.

At this point I am debating what to do. I have sent yet another note to the sales department asking for my refund, and requesting to be taken off their mailing list. I have obviously referred their software to Threatcode.com and their spam mail to spam@uce.gov, and I thought it appropriate to warn others not to waste $100 on this software that requires you to put your computer at risk to use it. I guess I will wait and see if the sales department finally responds before I take any further steps though.

Published 17 August 2006 10:01 PM by jesper
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Comments

# Steve Mullen said on 18 August, 2006 09:55 AM
I downloaded Windows Live Writer yesterday and lo and behold I had to login to my Admin account to install it. It's deliverd as an MSI so no runas was available. I'm sure with Vista installation would have been a bit easier.
# Dewi Morgan said on 18 August, 2006 10:04 AM
Yes! Thank you. Blogs of significant industry personalities are one of the few places where naming and shaming can take pace and stand any chance of being addressed. More please! Though, it's important for hopefully-obvious reasons(*), that if they ever do improve things, you edit the original post to reflect that rather than make a new post. Bloggers often forget this. (* Anyone reaching your original post through a link or web search will otherwise not have access to the updated information. Best solution is to edit the OP with a link to the update.)
# Alun Jones said on 18 August, 2006 10:18 AM
I've only once tried the refund route - returning PeachTree Accounting to the store, because it, like the QuickBooks I was trying to replace, insisted on my being administrator in order to run the software. That was a few years ago, and since I was taking it back to an office supply store, there was no problem getting the refund. I have been tempted on many other occasions - mostly for kids' games that require administrator access (Thomas the Tank Engine, for instance). Sadly, the ructions that would be caused if I did return the game would have been worse than just giving the kid local administrator access on his box. I don't recommend giving administrator access to kids in general, but since this is his computer exclusively, he's only given local administrator access, and we regularly scan the thing (as well as having "the talk" about spyware etc regularly), I don't feel too threatened. I get more viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, etc from my father than from my son.
# jesper said on 18 August, 2006 12:03 PM

Steve, MSI's are tricky. You can run misexec.exe as an admin, or use one of Aaron Margosis' excellent utilities to do it. If you have a domain you can also distribute the MSI using IntelliMirror. If would show up in Add/Remove Programs and install as a non-admin from there.

# Scotty said on 20 August, 2006 12:35 PM
Had a similar problem with Sothink's DHTML menu builder and got the same run around from them and gave up as it was costing me more than the £15 it cost me in time and effort. A couple of priceless e-mails explaining how to log as Administrator and the instructions for how to reset the password using a Linux boot CD for the Administrator account did almost make me feel I had got close to my money's worth.
# Dan Halford said on 21 August, 2006 08:53 PM
One takes it that the Nobeltec software won't be getting a great write-up on Amazon then... Now there's a thought. How's about marking up every LUA-allergic software title on Amazon, preferably with a warning in big bold scary looking letters with a message that 'normal' people can understand. Something like "Amazon security warning: if you install this software, you won't be able to see naked dancing pigs in future".
# jesper said on 22 August, 2006 10:15 AM

Interesting thought Dan. I am pretty sure it would violate some kind of merchant agreement for Amazon or the vendor to mark it as such, but it is obviously something the community could do through public feedback mechanisms.

# Scotte said on 01 September, 2006 10:34 PM
Steve, the following in a .reg file will add a RunAs option for MSI files. -----snip----- Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Msi.Package\shell\runas] @="" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Msi.Package\shell\runas\command] @="\"%1\" %*" -----snip----- The problem with public feedback forums is that not enough people care about well behaved software since most people run with admin privs anyway. This really is one of the things I'm most looking forward to with Vista. The UAC prompts will be more likely to be flagged as a bug by users which will hopefully finally get enough people to convince vendors to change.
# Eric said on 13 September, 2006 06:41 AM
Let's not dream i doubt tha vista is the solution :) and even if it is it gonna take a long time before it gets widly deployed. So i would be glad to have a web site with feedback on non LUA Software and tips like the one of Aaron.
# W. E. Bailey said on 26 September, 2006 08:59 PM
Jesper, I too experienced the same limited users problem with T&C 3.3. However, Nobeltec was very good about trying to help me resolve the problem. Here's what we did to get T&C running under my limited user account: Load T&C while under the restricted login by using the ADMIN name and password. Switch to the ADMIN Account. Using Explore.exe, go to “C:\Program Files\Nobeltec. Right click on the Nobeltec folder and go to properties. Click on the Security Tab. In the “Group or users Name” box, scroll down to “Users.” Highlight “Users” and check the “Full Control” box in the Allow column. Click on “Apply” and “OK.” Close Explore.exe and return to the Restricted / Non-Admin login and account. Create a new icon on the Restricted Account desktop that points to: “C:\Program Files\Nobeltec\Visual Series\Tides32.exe.” T&C 3.3 now runs fine under the lua, but I recently found a new bug in the REAL TIME Window which renders it un-usable. However, Nobeltec was able to duplicate the problem I found and have escalated my case. If they get it resolved, I'll post again. Best regards.
# jesper said on 26 September, 2006 11:04 PM

Wow! That's a totally different experience from what I had. I got no help at all from their tech support, and all the sales team did was put my name on their advertising e-mail list when I contacted them. That's very interesting that your's was so different.

# j. said on 03 April, 2007 10:06 AM

purchased t&c v3.5 when i try to load it it gives a message at the beginning of the installation "unble to load plug in library, please rebuild your project and make sure all required plug ins are installed. Action skipped" then goes to installer but comes back with

" could not access network location NOTSET" then quits any help would be appreciated.

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