How do I run Control Panel Applet as Administrator.

[Jean Cyr]

Ok, I have a control panel applet that has a legitimate need to run as
administrator. Via WMI it needs to write to settings to registry hive
HKLM for an associated service. When I run it under a normal
administrator account I get an 'Access Denied' error.

No problem, I'll just create a manifest and set the
requireAdministrator requirement as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity processorArchitecture="x86"
version="3.0.16.0" type="win32" name="myapp.cpl"/>
<description>My Application control panel applet</description>
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type="win32"
name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0"
publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*"
processorArchitecture="x86"/>
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<security>
<requestedPrivileges>
<requestedExecutionLevel
level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="true"/>
</requestedPrivileges>
</security>
</trustInfo>
</assembly>

Well, no dice! Now I get an error popup that reads 'Illegal value:
requested run level'!!! What gives? I expected the LUA to prompt me
about allowing elevation, but no such luck! Is this thing brain dead
or am I? There doesn't seem to be a way around this.

 

[Jean Cyr]

Well, no dice! Now I get an error popup that reads 'Illegal value:
requested run level'!!! What gives? I expected the LUA to prompt me
about allowing elevation, but no such luck! Is this thing brain dead
or am I? There doesn't seem to be a way around this.

Follow up: Tried the CoCreateInstanceAsAdmin approach on the WMI
locator object. No joy... The object doesn't support elevation. As a
last ditch attempt to get past this roadblock and move on with further
debugging I tried creating a patch using the Compatibility
Administrator. Bump... doesn't elevate CPLs.

At this point development is dead in the water for Vista preparations.
Hope MS will see fit to clearing this up soon. :-(

 

[Chris Altmann]

IIRC, a cpl is just a DLL and runs in the control panel process, thus you
can't elevate it. You need to rewrite (or separate the admin parts) as an
exe or other external process that UAC can elevate.

 

[Tony Hoyle]

IIRC, a cpl is just a DLL and runs in the control panel process, thus
you can't elevate it. You need to rewrite (or separate the admin parts)
as an exe or other external process that UAC can elevate.

There's an program called 'RunLegacyCPLElevated' that is essentially an
elevated rundll32 (you call it with the same parameters). I just put in
an elevate button that reruns the cpl using that.. it'll do for the
betas until MS put in a proper mechanism.

Tony