Force an existing application to always run with UAC virtualization on

Question

I've seen several questions that are the opposite of this; "How do I disable virtualization?" That is not my question. I want to force an application to run with virtualization enabled.

I have an application that ran just fine under Windows XP, but, because it writes its configuration to its working directory (a subfolder of "C:\Program Files (x86)"), it does not work completely under Windows 7. If I use task manager to turn on UAC Virtualization, it saves its config just fine, but of course it then can't load that config.

I do not want to set it to run as administrator, as it does not need those privileges. I want to set it to run with UAC Virtualization enabled.

I found a suggestion that I put some magic in the registry at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags. For completeness I also put it in Wow6432Node, but neither had any effect.

Answer 1

File system is virtualized in certain scenarios, so is your question how to still turn it on when your application does not qualify? It is unlikely possible, MSDN:

Virtualization is not in option in the following scenarios:

• Virtualization does not apply to applications that are elevated and run with a full administrative access token.

• Virtualization supports only 32-bit applications. Non-elevated 64-bit applications simply receive an access denied message when they attempt to acquire a handle (a unique identifier) to a Windows object. Native Windows 64-bit applications are required to be compatible with UAC and to write data into the correct locations.

• Virtualization is disabled for an application if the application includes an application manifest with a requested execution level attribute.