.NET Information center: A Quick-Start Guide of Process Mandatory Level Checking and Self-elevation under UAC

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Quick-Start Guide of Process Mandatory Level Checking and Self-elevation under UAC

Introduction

User Account Control (UAC) is a new security component in Windows Vista and newer operating systems. With UAC fully enabled, interactive administrators normally run with least user privileges. This article and the attached code samples demonstrate these frequently asked coding scenarios related to UAC.

1. How to check if the current process is running as administrator?
2. How to know if the primary access token of the current process belongs to user account that is a member of the local Administrators group, even if it currently is not elevated?
3. How to check if the current process is elevated? The elevation information is available to only Windows Vista and newer operating systems because there was no UAC and "elevation" before Windows Vista.
4. How to get the integrity level of the current process (System/High/Medium/Low/Unknown)? The integrity level information is available to only Windows Vista and newer operating systems because there was no UAC and "integrity level" before Windows Vista.
5. How to show a UAC shield icon on the UI for tasks that require elevation?
6. How to self-elevate the current process?
7. How to automatically elevate the process when it's started up?

We provide code samples to demonstrate the above how-to scenarios in three programming languages (native VC++, VC#, VB.NET) to meet the needs of different developers.