Cannot drag and drop to debugged-application run from a privileged-run Visual Studio 2010

Question

I'm debugging my application which has drag-n-drop features in Visual Studio 2010. I have to run the IDE in privileged mode since some of my project required so.

My problem:

I can drag-drop when run the .exe file normally (run from Windows Explorer (WE)) but when debugging in VS2010 I cannot do drag-dropping between my app and WE.

I tried to open WE in privileged mode but still cannot debug either.

Do you have the same problem? If you do, do you have any work-around for it? Please share.

Answer 1

Another workaround is to run the debug binary from Windows Explorer and attach to the process from within Visual Studio via the "Tools" or "Debug" menu. I have verified that drag events are received in the debugger when using this approach.

Answer 2

This is by design, an aspect of UAC called UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation). It prevents a non-elevated process from hijacking an elevated one through Windows messages or drag and drop. It protects against shatter attacks. There is a way for the elevated process to explicitly allow messages with ChangeWindowMessageFilter. But not for drag and drop, it isn't message based.

There is no decent api-level workaround for this, it has to be done declaratively. The manifest for the program needs to use uiaccess = true, be code-signed with a certificate from an approved authority and be installed in c:\windows or c:\program files.