User Account Run Setup Catch 22

[Max Plank]

Greetings,

Does anyone know a workaround for the following catch 22:

* From a Standard User Account under Vista, a user runs a setup
program to install an application.

* The setup program requires Administrator Privileges in order to run
and displays the admin password dialog. The admin types in the
password and the setup program proceeds with installation.

* During the installation, the setup program queries for the
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA folder location in order to create folders and
install per-user files there. Since the setup program is running with
administrator privileges, the folder location returned is the
administrator's CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA folder, not the user's.

TIA

 

[Victek]

Does anyone know a workaround for the following catch 22:

* From a Standard User Account under Vista, a user runs a setup
program to install an application.

* The setup program requires Administrator Privileges in order to run
and displays the admin password dialog. The admin types in the
password and the setup program proceeds with installation.

* During the installation, the setup program queries for the
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA folder location in order to create folders and
install per-user files there. Since the setup program is running with
administrator privileges, the folder location returned is the
administrator's CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA folder, not the user's.

TIA

One workaround would be to log in with an Admin account and temporarily make
the Standard User a local admin. Log in with that account, install the
software, and when you're done reduce to user's privileges. I used to do
this on XP because it was common for software installs to fail when using
the "Run As" option with Admin credentials.

 

[Max Plank]

One workaround would be to log in with an Admin account and temporarily make
the Standard User a local admin. Log in with that account, install the
software, and when you're done reduce to user's privileges. I used to do
this on XP because it was common for software installs to fail when using
the "Run As" option with Admin credentials.

Thanks - I guess I wasn't really looking for a workaround - poor
choice of words on my account.

Further research has edged me closer to a solution, but not there
yet. Here's what I've got so far:

When testing from a Standard User account, I find that folders and
files created under Vista by an installer running with administrator
privileges cannot be accessed (not even copied) by a program running
"asInvoker" from a Standard User account.

From what I (poorly) understand at this moment, the key is for the
installer to grant ACL permissions to any folders/files created during
the setup process so they can be accessed later by the program running
asInvoker under a standard user account. I'm hoping it's merely a
question of the installer calling SHGetFolderPath() with the proper
htoken:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762181(VS.85).aspx
htoken: An access token used to represent a particular user. This
parameter is usually set to NULL, in which case the function tries to
access the current user's instance of the folder. However, you may
need to assign a value to hToken for those folders that can have
multiple users but are treated as belonging to a single user. The most
commonly used folder of this type is Documents.

Some references to the problem and potential solution:

http://www.msdner.com/dev-archive/89/24-113-898420.shtm
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2276841&SiteID=1
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms717798(VS.85).aspx
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...2517-4e7a-ba39-d37c8b8202e31033.mspx?mfr=true

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