How do I grant SeCreateSymbolicLink on Windows Vista Home edition

Question

I want to be able to use mklink to create symbolic links on my Windows Vista Home edition computer.

However, I must grant SeCreateSymbolicLink before mklink will be able to function on Vista Home edition (by default the right is revoked).

Home edition provides no UI or tool facility to grant/revoke discreet rights.

A Wikipedia link on NTFS symbolic links says the ntrights.exe tool that comes in Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools can be used to grant this right on Home edition. However, after installing these tools, that proved to be incorrect. That version of ntrights.exe does not recognize SeCreateSymbolicLink and Microsoft's web site does not show any update available for this particular resource kit tool.

Is there a PowerShell script way to do this? Or any other tool/technique that might be feasible to use on Vista Home edition?

Answer 1

polsedit

_{(source: southsoftware.com)}
"Polsedit is a freeware utility that allows you to modify user policies such as user account rights and user privileges on a local or remote Windows NT-based system. This can be useful when for some reason you are unable ro run secpol.msc snap-in, for example, XP Home and Vista Home do not have secpol.msc at all. The user interface of Polsedit is very similar to the standard policies editor from Windows, but it also displays some internal data, which can be useful for developers."

Answer 2

How about running secpol.msc and granting the Create symbolic links permission to the group or users. By default this permission is granted only to Administrators group.

From the programming side, it looks that you need SE_CREATE_SYMBOLIC_LINK_NAME priviledge or its text variant: SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege. More details in msdn

secpol.msc - Create Symbolick Links permission http://blog.i18n.ro/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/policy_create_symbolic_links.png