[RESOLVED] Writing to %program files%, UAC, Manifests, Windows Styles

[dilettante]

IsUserAnAdmin reports the rights of the process, not the user. As far as I can tell it is always correct. "Admin" means the same thing as "elevated." Feel free to look for another function, but the preferred way is also given (with a C code sample) and does exactly the same thing.

I think you're looking at the issue wrong maybe? It means "am I running elevated?"


Of course you still want a manifest. Just to begin with it avoids virtualization, and this means that when a user specifies to write a file someplace they can't you'll get expected behavior (errors 70, 75, etc.) instead of succeeding but putting the file in a vistualized location. You need a manifest with trustInfo unless you want appcompat behavior. Another example is to avoid inaccurate legacy installer detection. This is a just do it option for development these days.

Beyond that a manifest does many other things. Visual styles are actually a byproduct of one of the things you specify in manifests: Side by Side assembly selection.

They can also be used to specify High-DPI awareness of an application, OS compatibility among current versions of Windows, registration-free COM and application isolation to help free you from DLL Hell, DLL relocation for non-COM DLLs, and many other things.


I agree that granting full permissions on a folder is usually overkill. It was just the most "eyes shut make this work" example.


As far as highestAvailable goes, it's a hack because you're expected to write applictions so they never need elevation until the user wants to perform a specific function requiring elevation. These functions should be marked with the UAC Shield icon, and request elevation only to perform that function.

In other words elevating the entire application is considered bad form. The main reason for this is that Microsoft knows darned well a lot of home users are going to always log on with an admin account. Writing programs the "right" way means they'll only see UAC prompts when required.