How to Tell If My Process Is Running as Administrator

How can I tell if my process is running as Administrator?

Technically, if you want to see if the member is the local administrator account, then you can get the security identifier (SID) of the current user through the User property on the WindowsIdentity class, like so (the static GetCurrent method gets the current Windows user):

WindowsIdentity windowsIdentity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();

string sid = windowsIdentity.User.ToString();

The User property returns the SID of the user which has a number of predefined values for various groups and users.

Then you would check to see if the SID has the following pattern, indicating it is the local administrator account (which is a well-known SID):

S-1-5-{other SID parts}-500

Or, if you don't want to parse strings, you can use the SecurityIdentifier class:

// Get the built-in administrator account.
var sid = new SecurityIdentifier(WellKnownSidType.BuiltinAdministratorsSid, 
    null);

// Compare to the current user.
bool isBuiltInAdmin = (windowsIdentity.User == sid);

However, I suspect that what you really want to know is if the current user is a member of the administrators group for the local machine. You can get this SID using the WellKnownSidType of BuiltinAdministratorsSid:

// Get the SID of the admin group on the local machine.
var localAdminGroupSid = new SecurityIdentifier(
    WellKnownSidType.BuiltinAdministratorsSid, null);

Then you can check the Groups property on the WindowsIdentity of the user to see if that user is a member of the local admin group, like so:

bool isLocalAdmin = windowsIdentity.Groups.
    Select(g => (SecurityIdentifier) g.Translate(typeof(SecurityIdentifier))).
    Any(s => s == localAdminGroupSid);

How to detect if CMD is running as Administrator/has elevated privileges?

ADDENDUM: For Windows 8 this will not work; see this excellent answer instead.

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Found this solution here: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/clevertricks.php

AT > NUL
IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
    ECHO you are Administrator
) ELSE (
    ECHO you are NOT Administrator. Exiting...
    PING 127.0.0.1 > NUL 2>&1
    EXIT /B 1
)

Assuming that doesn't work and since we're talking Win7 you could use the following in Powershell if that's suitable:

$principal = new-object System.Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal([System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())
$principal.IsInRole([System.Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)

If not (and probably not, since you explicitly proposed batch files) then you could write the above in .NET and return an exit code from an exe based on the result for your batch file to use.

How can I detect if my process is running UAC-elevated or not?

The following C++ function can do that:

HRESULT GetElevationType( __out TOKEN_ELEVATION_TYPE * ptet );

/*
Parameters:

ptet
    [out] Pointer to a variable that receives the elevation type of the current process.

    The possible values are:

    TokenElevationTypeDefault - This value indicates that either UAC is disabled, 
        or the process is started by a standard user (not a member of the Administrators group).

    The following two values can be returned only if both the UAC is enabled
    and the user is a member of the Administrator's group:

    TokenElevationTypeFull - the process is running elevated. 

    TokenElevationTypeLimited - the process is not running elevated.

Return Values:

    If the function succeeds, the return value is S_OK. 
    If the function fails, the return value is E_FAIL. To get extended error information, call GetLastError().

Implementation:
*/

HRESULT GetElevationType( __out TOKEN_ELEVATION_TYPE * ptet )
{
    if ( !IsVista() )
        return E_FAIL;

    HRESULT hResult = E_FAIL; // assume an error occurred
    HANDLE hToken   = NULL;

    if ( !::OpenProcessToken( 
                ::GetCurrentProcess(), 
                TOKEN_QUERY, 
                &hToken ) )
    {
        return hResult;
    }

    DWORD dwReturnLength = 0;

    if ( ::GetTokenInformation(
                hToken,
                TokenElevationType,
                ptet,
                sizeof( *ptet ),
                &dwReturnLength ) )
    {
            ASSERT( dwReturnLength == sizeof( *ptet ) );
            hResult = S_OK;
    }

    ::CloseHandle( hToken );

    return hResult;
}

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