I want my C# program to run with administrator privileges.
I know I can do this by editing the manifest file.
But is there any possible way to ask the user's permission only once (at first launching of program), not every time?
No you cannot do that. When running under UAC, if an application needs to be elevated, the UAC dialog must be shown every time the process starts.
If you want to minimise the amount of times the user has to face the UAC dialog, the solution is for your application not to require elevation. If there are some tasks that your application performs that do require elevation, move them into a separate process, and request elevation only when the user attempts those tasks. All these issues are covered in some detail over on MSDN in the UAC guidelines.
But I want to know is there any possible way to ask user's permission only once(at first launching of program), not every time?
No, there is not. The entire purpose of UAC is to make sure the user is aware that they are providing elevated permissions every time they execute a program that requires it. There is no way to make your program "violate" that behavior.
Yes, but not directly. You can use the Task Scheduler to create Administration Mode Shortcuts without the UAC Prompts. See this link.
You could probably wire something up programmatically that would create this shortcut upon first run.
Related
I am currently coding a WPF project. The project is a sort of Task Manager program. Inside of the project, there are methods that take real-time PC data (temp, frequency, etc). However, some of the methods in the project require administrator privileges, so that the program can have access to the different values/data from the PC.
The problem at hand is that the program asks for these permissions every time the program is run. While I know this is just a personal preference, I would like to make the program only ask for the said privileges at installation/first run, so that the user does not have to authorize their permission every time.
Just to be clear, this is not a question about how to get the administrator privileges in general. I know that there is the option to manipulate the app.manifest file. This question is only pertaining to keeping the set administrator privileges programmatically, or through other means such as visual studios.
(Also, the program uses NSIS as an installer, if this is at all helpful)
Thanks
EDIT:
Looking back at this question, it was a pretty stupid one. It was just due to my sloppy/lazy coding.
That is not possible because the purpose of UAC Prompt is to create awareness for the user so they know that they are allowing admin privileges to the software.
I Do not really advise you to skip the step of the prompts.
You can not do it directly but you can indirectly , if you can write a code to do the following steps here , you can achieve what you asked for.
Windows is a secure operating system. If the user is not an administrator: then you don't get to control that.
What would your application have done under Windows XP?
Would it have crashed?
Would you have refused to run?
Would you have told the user that they need to be an administator?
Is there no lesser mode you can use that can still give the user useful information? After all, Process Explorer is still able to run and give me all kinds of useful information about processes on the computer.
But if the user is a standard user, you have no way to change that at install time.
I'm creating an Application which requires a Password to Exit.
so I disabled the close button and removed from TaskBar.
I'm also able to remove from TaskManager Applications Tab. But when I search in TaskManagers Processes tab, It is visible in it and the I'm able to end the process thus end the application from there. So I need to hide the Process even from there.
Can you help me in Doing this??
Look at this topic:
How can I keep Task Manager from killing my program?
someone asked for same thing.
The best answer:
AV Programs like Kaspersky probably use a driver and use hook to
prevent termination. In your situation I would advise to set an ACL on
the process, this prevents termination with Task Manager or cmdline
tools (if the user does not have the Debug privilege). Of course the
user can always use a tool like Process Explorer, take ownership of
the process, set new ACL and Terminate.
If the user is not an administrator it would suffice to run the
process in a different user context (eg launch it from a service).
Here some information on msdn:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms684880(v=vs.85).aspx
Basically, I have an exe app that is installed with priviledges (as in, the user presses the "Allow" button in Vista/Win7 UAC check), then the application starts and sets itself to auto-run so that the application will automatically restart again once the computer is rebooted (all done while elevated). The autostarting is requested by user, and is not enforced upon them.
This reboot instruction is set in the registry, in the CURRENT_USER section as below:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
The problem is, when the computer reboots, Windows will not let it execute unless the user re-authorizes it as an elevated process again (namely, a taskbar icon pops up in the tasktray saying the starting of my EXE/process was prevented, and the user is given the ability to launch the blocked app using menus on the icon in the tasktray).
I would like to add that I have the manifest file integrated into the EXE, so there is no problem on that end, and it registers its intentions accurately in the XML file.
Why does Windows do this by design? If an exe was authorized once, shouldn't that imply that it be authorized permanently?
But the main question I would like to ask is, how do I get around this? Imagine my users having to do this every single time the application needs to autorun?
Also, I would like to avoid the whole "your app shouldn't be running in elevated mode in the first place" argument/discussion, or the "no app needs elevated priviledges, you need to rewrite it" discussion. I can assure you that my app needs elevated priviledges (unfortunately). More details below if interested, not necessary to interpret or understand the question in this post, but included because I know some people will ask)...
Additional Unnecessary Reading:
...In fact, it requires it in 87% of all launches (depending on what users do), and for the 13% of times were it is not needed (that's, 13% of all launch instances, not 13% of users), I am developing a second exe where only that is launched first, and once an elevated feature is needed/requested, the elevated portion loads, saving 13% of all launches from hassling people with UAC nag, I will only have this ready by 2013. I'm going to all this work to split up functions that don't logically belong in different areas of the application - even with all this work, the problem I mentioned above does not get resolved (but rather, very slightly minimized or deferred).
I'm not sure why this was tagged with any programming language, and since it is really a ServerFault question it doesn't even belong here as far as I can tell.
The normal way to handle this is via Task Scheduler though, using the Run with Highest Privileges option. There are several published descriptions of the process involved, such as the old one at Make Vista launch UAC restricted programs at startup with Task Scheduler.
Why does Windows do this by design? If an exe was authorized once,
shouldn't that imply that it be authorized permanently?
That's a matter of opinion, but here's mine. If I needed Visual Studio to run elevated yesterday because I wanted it to regsvr32 a DLL, that doesn't prove that I want it to run elevated today on some different app.
But the main question I would like to ask is, how do I get around this?
I would use a service. The programming is non-trivial but that's how I would autorun an elevated process.
Either ask the user to turn off UAC or, as you already mentioned, redesign your application so that it elevates at the point elevation is needed, or run a service under system account and let it do the stuff which requires elevation.
System.IO.FileMode.Create
Specifies that the operating system should create a new file. If the file already exists, it will be overwritten.
But suppose i do not have access to a drive and need additional priviliedges, how do i get them?
What i mean is - as Windows Vista and Windows 7 have UAC - User Account Control, how can:
I bypass it
If it cant be bypassed then how can i ask the user to Click on Yes/No Prompt which pops up via the UAC window?
In the application manifest, set
level="requireAdministrator"
in the requestedExecutionLevel element.
The user must elevate before running the application, but will not be prompted again.
2. I'm pretty sure you can't control what the popup will say, if that is what you mean. Maybe display a hint in a tooltip or (ugh) a pre-popup? Don't forget to put a shield symbol on the button or whatever that launches the action!
See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx
Edit: corrected syntax for manifest entry. Also, mind this is not the recommended or endorsed way of doing things. In general, try to work with UAC, not against it.
Using UAC is a process level issue. The entire process would need to be elevated in order to perform such an action. A good document that does some explaining of UAC and how to use it can be found on CodeProject.
I have simple WinForms application where modifying Windows Registry. The problem is that in Vista / Windows 7 I need to force user to switch to administrator.
I do not want to force user to Run as Administrator form start of the application. I want him to do it when there is necessity to write to registry.
Best case scenario would be to reach exacly the same message which appear in lot's of Setups, when user need to 'switch' to Administrator so there is no necessity to Run as Administrator form beginning.
How I can achieve this in .Net ?
Partitioning is the way to go if the application sometimes doesn't do the Registry thing and sometimes does. The three keys to partitioning are (1) have a manifest on the second exe, as Ho says, (2) put a shield on the button/menu item so the user expects the elevation, and (3) launch it with ShellExecute (before calling Start, set the UseShellExecuteFlag to true) so that the manifest is used.
However, before going to the trouble of splitting your app, I would ask two questions. First, is it ever used for non administrative purposes or does every user always "click that button" and need to elevate? If so, then just put an admin manifest on the app and don't partition it. Second, are you sure to need to write to that part of the registry? Could you move your key to something under HKCU? If you can, then you don't need elevation any more and everyone's happier. I always like to consider those possibilites first since they mean less code and less testing than partioning does.
As Aaronaught says, I don't think it's possible for a process to to request to elevate itself. One way around this is that you split your process into two apps, one is the normal one that does most of the work and the other one only does the registry writes and this one has a manifest that contains something like
<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator"/>
As far as I know, there's no API to elevate a process. It happens automatically when a process tries to launch another process in elevated mode.
This is also how it works with the Windows Installer. I'm not sure if it literally starts another elevated process or just creates an elevated COM object, but it's effectively the same thing.
I personally wouldn't resort to this hackish workaround to elevate your process mid-execution; if your process may require elevation, then make that explicit with a manifest and let the consent message pop up on startup. But if you absolutely must do this, then that's how - you need to launch an elevated process from within your app.