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Firstly I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to do anything "nasty" or "hackerish", nor am I trying to hide anything from user here.

During installations (using InstallShield LE) of my application user is prompted by Windows UAC to allow it to run in Administrator mode; If user accepts it - installation continues (standard behavior) and user again can check the option to add this program to autorun list (by adding a registry key to HKLM/../Run). All is fine and normal. But after every Windows restart, when this application starts, UAC kicks in and asks for user permission. Question is, how to avoid it, since it's a bit annoying (yet my app needs Administrator privileges to run)?

I mean user already granted such permissions on installation, so I cannot see a reason why it needs to be prompted on every startup? Moreover, I believe most antivirus software and such, also require elevated permissions to operate, but UAC doesn't prompt for it at Windows Startup.

Thank you for any advises, information, comments or solutions.

rexem
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    A service or a scheduled task doesn't invoke the UAC prompt. That's how virus scanners bypass the prompt. It is otherwise completely unclear why your program does. It normally requires adding a manifest to the program to ask for "requireAdministator". Googles well. And the name of your exe matters. Avoid "setup", "install", "upgrade". – Hans Passant Sep 24 '11 at 23:01

4 Answers4

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  1. Does your application really need to start elevated? Or will it need to elevated access later when the user uses it to perform an action? If you can, drop the later admin task into a separate exe, allowing the main exe to start with no elevation - when you shellexecute the worker process later it will UAC on demand.

  2. At install time, as you have noted, you have elevated the installer. If you want to run elevated code on subsequent runs, automatically, this is the point to install a service - which is what all those other apps you mentioned do.

Chris Becke
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You can't get around UAC for a process started in an interactive session. You could use a service running as a privileged user but you would be far better off finding a way to do whatever you do without requiring admin rights.

David Heffernan
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It's not possible for a program to run elevated without prompting. What you want to do is factor those portions of your application that need elevation into a windows service that runs as system. Then your autostarting application can make remoting calls to the service to delgate those activities that the user can't do without elevating.

Christopher Painter
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Not done it but I found this article Selectively disable UAC for your trusted Vista applications that says use 'Application Compatibility Toolkit' from microsoft.

The Compatibility Administrator allows you to create a database of compatibility fixes that will allow you to run certain applications without an accompanying UAC.

  • Run the Compatibility Administrator as admin
  • select a new database template
  • Click the Fix button on the toolbar. When you see the Create New Application Fix wizard ... enter details about your app
  • Select a Compatibility Level
  • Select RunAsInvoker as the fix

It seems that the last one

Selecting the RunAsInvoker option will allow the application to launch without requiring the UAC prompt.

Should do what you want provided that the invoker is admin and I think you can do this at start up using the scheduler : Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows 7 or Vista

As you can see it runs your app in the compatibility mode which may or may not be acceptable for you.

Preet Sangha
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