UAC on Win Server 2008 causing me a headache!

Question

My installer deploys a configuration exe which is used to do some basic configuration on a windows service which is also installed. The exe also needs to create and write some registry keys. On a Windows server 2008 environment these keys can't be created. I have investigated and found that this is an Administrator privilege, and the exe isn't prompting for Admin permissions which are needed under UAC on 2008. I can work around this by right clicking the exe and running as Administrator. This isn't ideal however as its an extra step I need to notify our clients of performing. Are there any other ways of elevating the admin permissions when running the exe?

Answer 1

Put a manifest on or with the exe. I can tell you how to embed the manifest using Visual Studio if you let me know what version of that you're using. If you're not using Visual Studio, or you don't build the exe, then you can just put the manifest file in the same folder as the exe and that will work too. In that case the file must be named the same as your exe, with .manifest on the end, eg for foo.exe it's foo.exe.manifest. The content should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<asmv1:assembly manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" name="MyApplication.app"/>
  <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2">
    <security>
      <requestedPrivileges xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
        <!-- UAC Manifest Options
            If you want to change the Windows User Account Control level replace the 
            requestedExecutionLevel node with one of the following.

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

            If you want to utilize File and Registry Virtualization for backward 
            compatibility then delete the requestedExecutionLevel node.
        -->
        <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />
      </requestedPrivileges>
    </security>
  </trustInfo>
</asmv1:assembly>

Notice the possible values for requestedExecutionLevel are all here in a comment, and this one uses requireAdministrator. Now it will always elevate and therefore work for you.