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I am running Visual Studio 2013 under Win 8 and moving my project from VB6 to vb.net
When the user clicks on a file with one of my extensions (eg "myfile.msct") it asks the user to approve changes by calling the UAC window
It works fine BUT the UAC appears only as a flashing Icon on the Taskbar - how do I ensure it appears right in the middle of the Screen (the user could easily miss that the taskbar is flashing as it is not particularly noticeable and fooled me at first)
Many thanks
Well, this is actually discussed here at length:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756922.aspx
It seems that:
"Background applications will automatically prompt the user for elevation on the taskbar, rather than automatically switching to the secure desktop for elevation. The elevation prompt will appear minimized on the taskbar and will blink to notify the user that an application has requested elevation. An example of a background elevation occurs when a user browses to a Web site and begins downloading an installation file. The user then goes to check e-mail while the installation downloads in the background. Once the download completes in the background and the install begins, the elevation is detected as a background task rather than a foreground task. This detection prevents the installation from abruptly stealing focus of the user's screen while the user is performing another task--reading e-mail. This behavior creates a better user experience for the elevation prompt.
However, some foreground applications currently prompt as background applications on Windows Vista. This behavior is the result of an absent parent HWND. In order to ensure that Windows Vista acknowledges your application as a foreground application, you must pass a parent HWND with a ShellExecute, CoCreateInstanceAsAdmin, or managed code call.
The UAC elevation mechanism uses the HWND as part of determining whether the elevation is a background or foreground elevation. If the application is determined to be a background application, the elevation is placed on the taskbar as a blinking button. The user must click on the button, as with any application requesting foreground access, before the elevation will continue. Not passing the HWND will result in this occurring even though the application might actually have foreground.
The following code sample illustrates how to pass HWND with ShellExecute:
I had a go at this in C++ but you then need to define the Structure SHELLEXECUTEINFO and the thing grows like Topsy and it showed all the signs of turning into a saga.Code:BOOL RunAsAdmin( HWND hWnd, LPTSTR lpFile, LPTSTR lpParameters )
{
SHELLEXECUTEINFO sei;
ZeroMemory ( &sei, sizeof(sei) );
sei.cbSize = sizeof(SHELLEXECUTEINFOW);
sei.hwnd = hWnd;
sei.fMask = SEE_MASK_FLAG_DDEWAIT | SEE_MASK_FLAG_NO_UI;
sei.lpVerb = _TEXT("runas");
sei.lpFile = lpFile;
sei.lpParameters = lpParameters;
sei.nShow = SW_SHOWNORMAL;
if ( ! ShellExecuteEx ( &sei ) )
{
printf( "Error: ShellExecuteEx failed 0x%x\n", GetLastError() );
return FALSE;
}
return TRUE;
}
Anybody done this in vb.net?
[Edite: at the point the user clicks on a file, my exe is NOT running so I guess that altering my code would not make any difference ... unless maybe, my exe runs FIRST but the user may just navigate to a file and click on it without initially having run the exe ...]