Elevating process privilege programmatically

Question

I m trying to install a service using InstallUtil exe but invoked through Process Start  Here s the code   ProcessStartInfo startInfo   new ProcessStartInfo  m strInstallUtil  strExePath   System Diagnostics Process Start  startInfo     where m strInstallUtil is the fully qualified path and exe to  InstallUtil exe  and strExePath is the fully qualified path name to my service   Running the command line syntax from an elevated command prompt works  running from my app  using the above code  does not  I assume I m dealing with some process elevation issue  so how would I run my process in an elevated state  Do I need to look at ShellExecute for this   This is all on Windows Vista  I am running the process in the VS2008 debugger elevated to admin privilege   I also tried setting startInfo Verb    runas   but it didn t seem to solve the problem

User · Answer

PrincipalPermission SecurityAction Demand  Role     BUILTIN Administrators      This will do it without UAC - no need to start a new process  If the running user is member of Admin group as for my case

User · Answer

According to the article Chris Corio  Teach Your Apps To Play Nicely With Windows Vista User Account Control  MSDN Magazine  Jan  2007  only ShellExecute checks the embedded manifest and prompts the user for elevation if needed  while CreateProcess and other APIs don t   Hope it helps   See also  same article as  chm

User · Answer

You can indicate the new process should be started with elevated permissions by setting the Verb property of your startInfo object to  runas   as follows   startInfo Verb    runas     This will cause Windows to behave as if the process has been started from Explorer with the  Run as Administrator  menu command   This does mean the UAC prompt will come up and will need to be acknowledged by the user  if this is undesirable  for example because it would happen in the middle of a lengthy process   you ll need to run your entire host process with elevated permissions by Create and Embed an Application Manifest  UAC  to require the  highestAvailable  execution level  this will cause the UAC prompt to appear as soon as your app is started  and cause all child processes to run with elevated permissions without additional prompting   Edit  I see you just edited your question to state that  runas  didn t work for you  That s really strange  as it should  and does for me in several production apps   Requiring the parent process to run with elevated rights by embedding the manifest should definitely work  though

User · Answer

You should use Impersonation to elevate the state   WindowsIdentity identity   new WindowsIdentity accessToken   WindowsImpersonationContext context   identity Impersonate      Don t forget to undo the impersonated context when you are done

User · Answer

According to the article Chris Corio  Teach Your Apps To Play Nicely With Windows Vista User Account Control  MSDN Magazine  Jan  2007  only ShellExecute checks the embedded manifest and prompts the user for elevation if needed  while CreateProcess and other APIs don t   Hope it helps   See also  same article as  chm

User · Answer

This code puts the above all together and restarts the current wpf app with admin privs   if  IsAdministrator      false           Restart program and run as admin     var exeName   System Diagnostics Process GetCurrentProcess   MainModule FileName      ProcessStartInfo startInfo   new ProcessStartInfo exeName       startInfo Verb    runas       System Diagnostics Process Start startInfo       Application Current Shutdown        return     private static bool IsAdministrator         WindowsIdentity identity   WindowsIdentity GetCurrent        WindowsPrincipal principal   new WindowsPrincipal identity       return principal IsInRole WindowsBuiltInRole Administrator          To run as admin  alter exe manifest file after building     Or create shortcut with  as admin  checked     Or ShellExecute C  Process Start  can elevate - use verb  runas      Or an elevate vbs script can launch programs as admin      does not work   runas  user admin  from cmd-line prompts for admin pass    Update  The app manifest way is preferred     Right click project in visual studio  add  new application manifest file  change the file so you have requireAdministrator set as shown in the above   A problem with the original way  If you put the restart code in app xaml cs OnStartup  it still may start the main window briefly even though Shutdown was called  My main window blew up if app xaml cs init was not run and in certain race conditions it would do this

[c#] Elevating process privilege programmatically?

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