473026 - context menu 'Open Containing Folder' in Download Manager does not work if Firefox is run under different account (with 'Run as...')

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect)

Description

[Dusko Lolic]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090110 Minefield/3.2a1pre

All my clients run Firefox under limited user account for security reasons.
As it is often impractical to run the whole windows system as limited user, ordinary administrative account is used, just the shortcut to start the browser is modified like this...

C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /user:asd /savecred "C:\Program Files\Minefield\firefox.exe"

... 'asd' being user account with limited rights.
The user will not notice any difference (beside obvious and expected inability to install/update add-ons) until he/she tries to 'Open Containing Folder' in Download Manager.

The bug has nothig to do with permissions. 'asd' can be administrator as well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In control panel create a new user account, named 'asd', computer administrator. Create a password for asd (required by 'runas')
2. Log off your regular account and log on to asd.
3. Create download folder common to all users, out of user directory, say 'c:\download'.
4. Start Firefox in order to create user profile for asd.
5. Set 'Tools/Options/Main/Downloads/Save files to' to 'c:\download'
6. Log off asd, log on back to your account.
6a. Normally we would change asd to limited user. Not neccesary here, the bug will show anyway!
7. Modify the shortcut (see details section).
8. Start Firefox with the modified shortcut. It will ask for password just once.
9. Download something. Download Manager opens. Wait until the file is received.
10. Right click on the file and select 'Open Containing Folder'.
Actual Results:  
Mouse cursor shows hourglass for a moment and nothing else happens.

Expected Results:  
Windows explorer should open with the downloaded file selected.

This is not new. It never worked. It is just that I can't remember since which version I started using this technic, and I finally decided to report it.

P.S. There supposedly should be 'Download Manager' in the component field of this bugreport form but I can't see it! That's why this goes under General!  ;-)

Comment 1

[Dusko Lolic]

I dug into the problem myself and found out that Firefox is not to blame.
Download manager uses windows explorer to open containing folder, and windows explorer is known to behave like described (nothing happens) when run with different credentials.

The solution is to enable 'Launch folder windows in a separate process' in folder options of the user 'asd'.

More about explorer and runas...
http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2004/07/07/175488.aspx

Sorry for everybody's time.

Comment 2

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Technically, the status of this bug is INVALID since it's not a bug in Firefox.  Thanks for digging into the issue and figure out what was going on!