Firefox asking for permission every time you start it in Windows 7

Recently my Firefox browser started asking for permission to make changes to my computer every time I started it... which was getting a mite annoying... So a little bit of digging around led me to check the permissions of the Firefox executeable program on my machine.

Now it seems for some reason that this file had been set to run with Administrator priviledges... which is a huge security no-no... if a malicious hacker managed to break through Firefox (not so hard when you take into account how long it took hackers to prove they could in a recent security competition) then they could potentially have administrative rights to your machine.

Anyway, I digress.  I found the solution was quite simple.

1. Browse to the folder where Firefox lives, probably:

c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox

OR

c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox

2. right-click on the firefox.exe file and choose "Properties":

3. Mine looked like the following (and hopefully yours does too - this will make it easy to fix):  Run this program as administrator was ticked, but greyed out.  Note: If its not greyed out you should probably still follow the instructions and not just untick it here to make sure all users run Firefox in unpriviledged mode (ie: NOT as administrator)

4. Simply click the "Change settings for all users" button and now you can untick the offending "Run this program as administrator option" as I have done below:

5. Then simply click OK, then OK again on the window underneath (You'll notice the greyed out "Run this program as administrator" is now unticked)... and all should be fixed.

6. Run Firefox and enjoy not having to panic about what it might be doing to your machine.

I don't know how this happened.  Many reports I found on the web suggested it occured mostly when people upgraded to Firefox 3.6, and this would seem to be about the time I noticed it - although I hibernate my machine and almost never close Firefox so its hard to say for sure in my case.

Anyway, I hope this helps.