ArmourySocketServer And ArmourySwAgent Asking For Password – A Solution

Insider 22 Sep , 2021 12

Recently upgraded my computer and yay, Unity WebGL build is much-much faster, 3 times faster now.

The upgrade come with tiny issues, like the one in the title. Built around an Asus ROG Strix B550-F motherboard, upon logging in Windows 10, you will be prompted to install Armoury Crate (actually, you can disable this from the BIOS, if you don’t want it). Apparently, it’s a drag to remove it completely. But, anyway, it’s got it’s uses (despite being a huge ad-driven crap).

As I’ve installed it as an administrator, when I’ve logged in as a normal user, ArmourySocketServer and then ArmourySwAgent asked for the admin password to run. What the shit?

The simplest solution would be to grant this application full controls rights for the Users groups. Locate it (typically it’s in C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\ArmouryDevice\dll\ArmourySocketServer), right-click on it, Properties, Security tab, make the changes there. However, this might be a breach of security. (this doesn’t actually seem to work, for me).

Anyway, digging a little bit, it turns out ArmourySocketServer is run as a task in Task Scheduler. Tweaking the task a bit will solve the issue. Here, a picture of how to do that is self-explanatory:

First, search in the taskbar for “Task Scheduler”.

Then, select ASUS group in the Task Scheduler Library (1), select ArmourySocketServer list entry (2), click Properties (3), click Change User or Group (4). “Bright” minds at Asus configured this to run as Users, which seems to be the cause of the problems. So you might want to select an administrator account (a specific one, not the Administrators group), because in step (5), you may want to configure it to run whether the user is logged in or not.

Now do the same for the remaining tasks in the ASUS group!

There are slim to none chances to brick your PC by doing these changes. Even so, do them at your own risk!

As ArmourySwAgent is started by one of these tasks (it seems), this should shut down any password asking from these apps. Somehow, it makes sense to do these changes since ArmouryCrate is installed for the admin user only.

This also seems to prevent these apps from running multiple instances (one for each user). Until Asus realizes that people use Windows UAC, I think this is a decent workaround to a dodgy piece of software.

I’d be happy to hear another solution, so please share!

Written by
Stefan Dicu
Owner of Piron Games and game developer.
COMMENTS #12
  • Matthias

    Hi, thank you for this article. I had the same problem and your solution was very helpful for me. But some options in the properties of a task were greyed out, so I had to find another solution.
    The only two points I edited were the trigger in ArmourySocketServer and Framework Service – I set it to the admin user only. Now I can switch my Windows accounts without the prompting for admin passwords.
    Best regards from Berlin, Matthias

    Reply
  • Siv

    Perfect – that works fast and flawless!

    Reply
  • Jason

    If you just change the user account to use from “Users” to “System” then it will fix the issue without having to use an administrator account.

    Reply
  • john

    I concur with using SYSTEM. This is in line with the access privelages with the other asus components in task scheduler that all also use SYSTEM. I think this permissioning may have been a typo when devs rolled the last update out. Thanks for solution.

    Reply
  • Karg

    @john @jason oh cool, thanks for the tip. I’ll check it out and update the post accordingly.

    Reply
  • Gartholameau

    Putting in an Admin Account worked for me, but If I change it to “SYSTEM” as suggested by Jason and John, it won’t allow me to check, “Run whether user is logged on or not”. Is that OK, or is “SYSTEM” not considered an ADMIN account, so it doesn’t matter?

    Reply
  • Steff

    Hm, options on step 4 are greyed out, just as Matthias mentioned. Also I have only one User, cant change to a Admin-Account, nor to “System” as mentioned.

    Did I miss something?

    Thanks for any reply.

    Reply
  • Karg

    As i’ve tested so far, system seems to be working (i think it “run whether user is logged in or not” doesn’t apply to system, only to real accounts).

    @steff have you tried to run task scheduler as administrator? (Actually, this might be an overlook from my part, gotta update the post accordingly)

    Reply
    • steff

      @Karg: Yes, twice now, just tried it one more time. In admin mode i got more options to choose from (Integrated Security Principals, Groups, User – my translations, since my windows is in german). I selected only the first, then clicked “ok” but I can’t close the next window by clicking “ok”, although there is no error message, it just won’t close. So I have to “cancel” it and I cannot switch “to run whether the user is logged in or not”, it simply remains on “user” in the first Window (the one, that apperas after concludig step 3)

      Reply
  • Danh

    These were also causing the infamous Cursor Flashing Busy bug on any non-admin account.
    I fixed both the password request and the flashing busy by setting to SYSTEM but also changed “Configure for:” to “Windows 10” rather than “Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008”.

    Reply
  • Thomas

    Thank you!

    Reply
  • Nat

    The problem I have is that for a standard user, AC doesn’t even get installed. I still get the 2 pop-ups at boot, and put the admin password in, but then AC isn’t available to launch. There’s no exe, and I Googled to see where the AC exe is located and found it, but double clicking it launches a command prompt that immediately closes (even when run as admin) and nothing else happens.

    Reply

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