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Firefox always requires privilege escalation to update even with maintenance service

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Shadow110

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I have one specific user that has seen this behavior persist across two computers. He uses Firefox by default, and every time an update is released, he submits a help desk ticket to have an administrator type in their password.

This is extremely irritating for the user, and for IT.

I recently got involved to try and fix this issue. I tried running the uninstaller, then manually scrubbing out anything associated with Firefox that I could find, rebooting, and reinstalling using the offline installer package WITH the maintenance service.

The maintenance service definitely shows up, it's set to run as the local SYSTEM account, and set to manual start. Launching it myself yields the message "This service started and stopped on it's own", so I assume that means that it needs to be called by some function in Firefox itself (this hypothesis is supported by the fact that manually launching the maintenance service creates a log that ends with "Not enough arguments to start service").

Then an update was released, and the user got a prompt for privilege escalation. This time, I did a full process monitor capture before updating. I captured the following 3 scenarios. 1. Launching Firefox, selecting "No" to the privilege escalation (consent.exe) window 2. Manually starting the Maintenance Service 3. Launching Firefox, and providing administrator credentials to the escalation window.

One thing I immediately noticed is that the application getting invoked by Firefox ISN'T the maintenance service. It's a .exe file called "updater.exe". The updater.exe application is the actual program asking for escalation.

I've confirmed that the checkbox in Advanced Settings for using the maintenance service is selected, so I'm at a loss at this point. Does anybody have any ideas?

I have one specific user that has seen this behavior persist across two computers. He uses Firefox by default, and every time an update is released, he submits a help desk ticket to have an administrator type in their password. This is extremely irritating for the user, and for IT. I recently got involved to try and fix this issue. I tried running the uninstaller, then manually scrubbing out anything associated with Firefox that I could find, rebooting, and reinstalling using the offline installer package WITH the maintenance service. The maintenance service definitely shows up, it's set to run as the local SYSTEM account, and set to manual start. Launching it myself yields the message "This service started and stopped on it's own", so I assume that means that it needs to be called by some function in Firefox itself (this hypothesis is supported by the fact that manually launching the maintenance service creates a log that ends with "Not enough arguments to start service"). Then an update was released, and the user got a prompt for privilege escalation. This time, I did a full process monitor capture before updating. I captured the following 3 scenarios. 1. Launching Firefox, selecting "No" to the privilege escalation (consent.exe) window 2. Manually starting the Maintenance Service 3. Launching Firefox, and providing administrator credentials to the escalation window. One thing I immediately noticed is that the application getting invoked by Firefox ISN'T the maintenance service. It's a .exe file called "updater.exe". The updater.exe application is the actual program asking for escalation. I've confirmed that the checkbox in Advanced Settings for using the maintenance service is selected, so I'm at a loss at this point. Does anybody have any ideas?

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Beyond me on this but you are correct it is updater.exe that is called when updates are available.

If you could please provide more information as to what OS this is deployed on.? What extensions/addons are being used.? What version are they running now.? Firefox Update Version 56.0.1 released today fyi if that is not their current version you will be at it again. Anything else that you can think off that would help us out to help you ??

Some people are moving to the Extended Release, it does not update as much and will end sometime or not. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/ It might be better suited to the needs here.

You may find this URL useful as it has custom configuration tool for versions and OS's https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#firefox:win10:fx56

Major Version changes coming in ver 57 on Nov/14/17 Fyi: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/

Any hoo if you could supply that information someone with the knowledge you are looking for I hope will be able to figure this out with you.