Windows has Blocked some Startup Programs – Cobian Backup
After successfully installing the free Cobian backup software (version 9) on a friend’s computer, I was annoyingly greeted by a re-occurring Windows popup balloon every time Windows Vista would start. The popup balloon above the system tray would say:
“Windows has blocked some startup programs…”
Windows Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) was blocking cbInterface.exe, the user interface for Cobian, from starting automatically. This is because cbInterface.exe was recognized as needing to be run as an administrator. After doing some research it became apparent that for many people, the problem began after they upgraded to Vista SP2.
To run cbInterface.exe I would have to right-click on the icon in the system tray, select “Run blocked program”, click to open the program, and pass through UAC.
Based on my research, the following are four solutions to the problem:
1. Disable cbInterface.exe from within msconfig
You could simply disable cbInterface.exe in msconfig. Doing so would not affect the existing backup tasks as they are run by cbservice.exe, the Cobian service executable which Vista doesn’t block. However, you would have to start the interface manually every time you wanted to create, modify, or delete a task.
2. Disable UAC.
A lot of people, out of annoyance, take this route. However, doing so would lower the overall security of your system. UAC prevents malware from taking administrative privileges and causing serious harm to your computer.
3. Copy cbInterface.exe and modify the registry
Although it didn’t work for everyone, this is the most popular solution. If it doesn’t work entirely right for you, try solution #4.
Renaming the executable and changing it’s value in the Windows Run key seems to solve the problem for a lot of people. The reasoning behind this is based on Vista’s UAC heuristics. Further information can be found at:
Program Names govern admin Rights in Vista
In Windows Explorer go to C:\Program Files\Cobian Backup 9\
Copy and paste the cbInterface.exe file. This will create a new file called “cbInterface – Copy.exe”
Open the Windows Registry (Start -> type “regedit”) and drill down to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Modify the Cobian Backup key from ..\cbInterface.exe” -service to ..\cbInterface – Copy.exe” -service
Restart your computer.
For some people the registry key may point to “C:\Program Files\Cobian Backup 9\Cobian.exe”. This means that you’re not running Cobian as a service. To make it a service, open the Cobian interface and click Tools -> Options. Under the General tab you can “install” the service. After you do so, the registry key will point to “..\cbInterface.exe -service” and you can change it to the name of the copied file.
4. Create a scheduled task to launch cbInterface.exe with the highest privileges
The following post on Technet describes how to do this in great detail:
Make Vista launch UAC restricted programs at Startup with Task Scheduler
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