Debug a program that needs administrator rights under Windows 7

Question

I'm running Visual Studio 2008 on Windows 7 64-bit. I'm logged in as administrator, and I'm running it as administrator, but the program I'm working on fails with access denied when I call a restricted API. If run the program from Explorer with "Run as Administrator" it works.

I was under the belief that Visual Studio 2008 debugs programs with whatever rights Visual Studio 2008 itself is running with. As it stands I can't debug my application due to this, and I'm at a loss as to what's going on.

Answer 1

This works for Visual Studio 2012.

• Create a manifest file: right click on the project and select "Add New Item", select "Application Manifest File". This will add a file named app.manifest to the project.
• Edit manifest file: set attribute level for tag requestedExecutionLevel to requireAdministrator.

Now your program will always require admin privileges, wherever it is executed. If launched by Visual Studio debugger, it will prompt you for restarting Visual Studio as administrator, if needed.