VB6 program needs to run and install without admin rights.

[buzzluck68]

Hello,

I have an in house application that we developed, but everyone who
needs to use the program are not allowed to be local admins on their
PCs. I was wondering if there was a way to code the application to
not require admin rights (for modifying/creating excel and text files
as well as modifying the registry)?

And I was wondering if there was a way around needing admin rights for
creating a setup package for the program?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Sambantham Kuppusamy]

For modifying / creating excel or text files you do not require admin
rights. However setup package requires admin rights to be installed one
time.
after that just copy the new exe files.

 

[buzzluck68]

For modifying / creating excel or text files you do not require admin
rights. However setup package requires admin rights to be installed one
time.
after that just copy the new exe files.

Sam, the application has dlls that it has to register when it
updates. This is what mainly creates the admin issues.

And for the modifying/creating files, i found that if the user has
rights to the programs folder, this is not an issue.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

If you use a installer based installation program , the Admin can grant
rights to this installation package ( MSI ) , it is even then possible to
perform automatic installaions from a remote admin console

hth

Michel

 

[Patrice]

In addition ot other responses, and for the "run" part it's likely you don't
wait at the proper location. In particular note that Program files is
readonly for normal users...

 

[Phill W.]

I have an in house application that we developed, but everyone who
needs to use the program are not allowed to be local admins on their
PCs. I was wondering if there was a way to code the application to
not require admin rights (for modifying/creating excel and text files
as well as modifying the registry)?

From recent encounters with Windows Vista:

Getting into Excel shouldn't require Admin rights.
Getting into the Registry shouldn't be a problem either, so long as
you're /only/ working within the CurrentUser hive. Try writing anything
under LocalMachine or elsewhere and you're likely to hit problems. If
you're lucky, you'll get hit by the dreaded UAC dialog. Failing that,
your updates will be "virtualized" and written somewhere totally
different and unexpected.

And I was wondering if there was a way around needing admin rights for
creating a setup package for the program?

If you're going to /install/ the program, then you'll need Admin rights
(on Vista, anyway). No exceptions. IIRC, just running a program with
"setup" in the name causes an elevation attempt.
If you can just /copy/ the program (.exe) onto the machine somewhere and
run it, then you might get around this.

HTH,
Phill W.

 

[buzzluck68]

From recent encounters with Windows Vista:

Getting into Excel shouldn't require Admin rights.
Getting into the Registry shouldn't be a problem either, so long as
you're /only/ working within the CurrentUser hive. Try writing anything
under LocalMachine or elsewhere and you're likely to hit problems. If
you're lucky, you'll get hit by the dreaded UAC dialog. Failing that,
your updates will be "virtualized" and written somewhere totally
different and unexpected.


If you're going to /install/ the program, then you'll need Admin rights
(on Vista, anyway). No exceptions. IIRC, just running a program with
"setup" in the name causes an elevation attempt.
If you can just /copy/ the program (.exe) onto the machine somewhere and
run it, then you might get around this.

HTH,
Phill W.

Phill,

Some of the settings are in the local machine keys of the registry, so
i usually give the users rights to only those keys so they can modify
them. And for updating/installing the app, it has about 7 dlls that
have to be registered to work with the exe since the app is written in
vb6. (We are working on updating it to .NET, but it is taking a while
since there was a lot of legacy vb5 code still in use, as well as
ActiveX controls.)

Anyways, thanks for the help, I just know there has to be another way
around this though.
Chris

 

[Patrice]

For the setup part the admin of the machine woever it is can run a setup
package. he setup pakcage can't decide by itself to run as an administrator.

For the "run part", you could consider storing this in HKCU instead and read
only machine wide settings in the HKLM. Try
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/01/UAC/default.aspx?loc=en and
you likely have more detailed guidelines about where you should write....