My Vista application needs to know whether the user has launched it "as administrator" (elevated) or as a standard user (non-elevated). How can I detect that at run time?
My Vista application needs to know whether the user has launched it "as administrator" (elevated) or as a standard user (non-elevated). How can I detect that at run time?
For those of us working in C#, in the Windows SDK there is a "UACDemo" application as a part of the "Cross Technology Samples". They find if the current user is an administrator using this method:
private bool IsAdministrator
{
get
{
WindowsIdentity wi = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
WindowsPrincipal wp = new WindowsPrincipal(wi);
return wp.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);
}
}
(Note: I refactored the original code to be a property, rather than an "if" statement)
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;
}