Is It Possible for the Executable to Ask for Administrator Rights? (Windows 7)

Is it possible for the executable to ask for Administrator rights? (Windows 7)

You cannot acquire elevated privileges after the process has started. Your options are:

1. Put the part of your application that requires elevated privileges into a separate process and manifest that with requireAdministrator.
2. Run the part of your application that requires elevated privileges as an out-of-proc COM object.

How to ask for Administrator privileges in Windows 7?

Take a look at the MSDN sample: UAC self-elevation (CSUACSelfElevation)

Also, Wikipedia actually has a pretty good reference including information on the ShellExecuteEx() "runas" verb and application manifest for elevation requests.

Why is Windows asking for system administrator privileges for running executables with install in their name?

This is part of the heuristics present in Windows Vista and later. From here if the file contains the words "install", "setup", "update" or "patch" - installer is assumed.

You can prevent this by adding the following to your manifest

<requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" />

Windows 7: Launching an application silently with admin privileges under default user account?

This goes against the security of the OS. You are basically asking to be able to bypass a security measure enforced by the OS. If you were allowed to do this, any malicious code could do the same thing, so I don't think that you can (or should) do it.

How to run application which requires admin rights from one that doesn't have them

Real problem: (from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control)

An executable that is marked as "requireAdministrator" in its manifest cannot be started from a non-elevated process using CreateProcess(). Instead, ERROR_ELEVATION_REQUIRED will be returned. ShellExecute() or ShellExecuteEx() must be used instead.

(BTW, ERROR_ELEVATION_REQUIRED error == 740)

Solution: (same site)

In a native Win32 application the same "runas" verb can be added to a ShellExecute() or ShellExecuteEx() call.

ShellExecute(hwnd, "runas", "C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe", 0, 0, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

This may be also helpful: (source: http://mark.koli.ch/2009/12/uac-prompt-from-java-createprocess-error740-the-requested-operation-requires-elevation.html)

2 - Basic UAC Flow

Ok, so before you dig into it, I thought it might be helpful to explain the basic flow of a UAC aware application and how everything fits together. Normally, your application runs as an unprivileged user. But, sometimes it needs to be an Administrator (to do whatever). So, here's the basic idea, in pseudo code:

int main (int argc, char **argv) {

  HRESULT operation = tryToDoSomethingPrivileged();

  if (operation == ACCESS_DENIED && !alreadyElevated) {

    // Spawn a copy of ourselves, via ShellExecuteEx().
    // The "runas" verb is important because that's what
    // internally triggers Windows to open up a UAC prompt.
    HANDLE child = ShellExecuteEx(argc, argv, "runas");

    if (child) {
      // User accepted UAC prompt (gave permission).
      // The unprivileged parent should wait for
      // the privileged child to finish.
      WaitForSingleObject(child, INFINITE);
      CloseHandle(pid);
    }
    else {
      // User rejected UAC prompt.
      return FAILURE;
    }

    return SUCCESS;

  }  

  return SUCCESS;

}

Finally, this is how I've done it:

if(0 == CreateProcess(argv[2], params, NULL, NULL, false, 0, NULL, NULL, &si, &pi)) {
        //runas word is a hack to require UAC elevation
        ShellExecute(NULL, "runas", argv[2], params, NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL);
}

And just for completness's sake - MSDN links to ShellExecute and CreateProcess:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762153%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682425%28VS.85%29.aspx

Requesting administrator privileges at run time

Not quite, but you can do the opposite—you can drop privileges if you already have them. So, you can have your program start out running as an Administrator, using one of the methods listed by Kate Gregory. Then, drop your unneeded privileges; see Dropping privileges in C++ on Windows for how to do that.

How do I force my .NET application to run as administrator?

You'll want to modify the manifest that gets embedded in the program. This works on Visual Studio 2008 and higher: Project + Add New Item, select "Application Manifest File". Change the <requestedExecutionLevel> element to:

 <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />

The user gets the UAC prompt when they start the program. Use wisely; their patience can wear out quickly.

Launch an app on Windows startup that requires administrator privileges

1. The indexing software "Everything" does show such a dlalog.
2. The others you are thinking of run only services with admin rights, not UI.
3. Running a service requires the software to be architected with that intent, ordinary user applications can be started with the service rules with the help of the "at" service, which you already know how to do (Task Scheduler).
4. You can substitute some other service for Task Scheduler, at the risk of annoying the user through needless duplication, waste of resources, and likely new security flaws.

Set aside your preference, and use Task Scheduler.
Or remove the background parts of your app and write a service to do those instead.

And be very careful when giving your code administrator rights. Any bug can result in subverting the entire security infrastructure. With great power comes great responsibility.

How to start a java jar with administrators privileges on windows 7

You can run cmd under Administrator and launch ANTRLWorks using java -jar command.

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