drag drop no longer working once application gets installed

Question

I have an application that has drag and drop functionality to import images and video's. While developing, and testing through Visual Studio this has never given any problems.

After installing through a set up project, everything in the application works fine, except the drag and drop, which seems to be doing nothing. Are there any security settings that need to be set through an installer, or something of that nature that could be preventing drag and drop after installation ?

Answer 1

Yes, your drag+drop will not be permitted if your program runs with elevated permissions. It is called User Interface Privilege Isolation, Vista UIPI for short. It is complementary to UAC and controlled by the uiAccess attribute in the manifest entry that you'd use to elevate your process. As well as a certificate and a proper install location.

Realistically: don't elevate your program. It is a security hole when restricted programs can get their objects dropped in your privileged program. UIPI tries to prevent that.

But debug your program first.

Answer 2

Build a debug version of your application, build your installer with the output. You can either include the .pdb files in the installer or copy them to the install location after you install.

Run the installed application, and then in Visual Studio, go to Debug --> Attach to Process. Select the process from the list, and click the "Attach" button. Add breakpoints, etc, and debug as normal.

If you don't run into the problem on your build machine, you can also run a remote debugging session to debug the application on a different computer, but this requires a little more setup.