How can I detect if my process is running UAC-elevated or not?

Question

My Vista application needs to know whether the user has launched it "as administrator" (elevated) or as a standard user (non-elevated). How can I detect that at run time?

Answer 1

For those of us working in C#, in the Windows SDK there is a "UACDemo" application as a part of the "Cross Technology Samples". They find if the current user is an administrator using this method:

private bool IsAdministrator {     get     {         WindowsIdentity wi = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();         WindowsPrincipal wp = new WindowsPrincipal(wi);          return wp.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);     } } 

(Note: I refactored the original code to be a property, rather than an "if" statement)

Answer 2

The following C++ function can do that:

HRESULT GetElevationType( __out TOKEN_ELEVATION_TYPE * ptet );  /* Parameters:  ptet     [out] Pointer to a variable that receives the elevation type of the current process.      The possible values are:      TokenElevationTypeDefault - This value indicates that either UAC is disabled,          or the process is started by a standard user (not a member of the Administrators group).      The following two values can be returned only if both the UAC is enabled     and the user is a member of the Administrator's group:      TokenElevationTypeFull - the process is running elevated.       TokenElevationTypeLimited - the process is not running elevated.  Return Values:      If the function succeeds, the return value is S_OK.      If the function fails, the return value is E_FAIL. To get extended error information, call GetLastError().  Implementation: */  HRESULT GetElevationType( __out TOKEN_ELEVATION_TYPE * ptet ) {     if ( !IsVista() )         return E_FAIL;      HRESULT hResult = E_FAIL; // assume an error occurred     HANDLE hToken   = NULL;      if ( !::OpenProcessToken(                  ::GetCurrentProcess(),                  TOKEN_QUERY,                  &hToken ) )     {         return hResult;     }      DWORD dwReturnLength = 0;      if ( ::GetTokenInformation(                 hToken,                 TokenElevationType,                 ptet,                 sizeof( *ptet ),                 &dwReturnLength ) )     {             ASSERT( dwReturnLength == sizeof( *ptet ) );             hResult = S_OK;     }      ::CloseHandle( hToken );      return hResult; }