I wanted to create a custom context menu for the windows folder where I can run the application with UAC elevation.
What I want, is to create a context menu where I can open the command prompt with administrator privilege. It gets boring every time when I need to run cmd with admin privilege and navigate to the required folder. So, I want to create a context menu for that. I can create the usual context menu, but I couldn't find a way to do it with UAC.
I have researched for a bit and also found a .reg file that does this stuff. I don't want to use the .reg file. I would rather manually do it in regedit.exe and also I don't know much about the .reg file to understand what is going on within the script.
Related
I am using NSIS to create installer for my application. I want to provide the feature in which user can double click and open a file of a particular file extension in my application. I have followed instructions provided in this link: http://gergo.erdi.hu/blog/2006-10-08-registering_windows_file_types_with_nsis/.
But it doesn't create registry key for me. My guess is that probably the installer has to be run as an administrator. But I don't unnecessarily want to prompt the user for administrative privilege.
How can I then associate my custom file type and icon with my application?
PS: I am using Windows 7 64 bit.
Try to write the keys into HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes instead of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. This should work without administrator privileges under Vista and later.
Let's say I have a simple program: SomeProgram.exe and Uninstaller.exe those programs are in C:\ProgramFiles\MyProgram along with several dll's and resources.
Anyways I have a simple installer that installs several prerequisites to that path. Now my question is how can I register SomeProgram.exe on window registry so that I can have it appear in add or remove programs in control panel. I will like to execute Uninstaller.exe when the user clicks on remove my program. Also I will like to create a folder on windows startup menu so that the user can start the program from there in case he does not want to have a shortcut on the desktop.
All you need to do is to create the registry entries as documented in the second link from "sergmat". This will make the program to appear in the list from Control Panel.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa372105(v=vs.85).aspx
I'm creating a Windows application that needs to add an entry to the Send-To explorer context menu, and needs to do so for all users. Since the Send-To folder is specific for each user, with no common folder for all users, I'm left with two choices:
I can go over all user profiles, as well as the default user profile, find the SendTo folder and add the shortcut to it. This will ensure the shortcut is deleted during uninstall.
Or, I can make sure the shortcut is in the SendTo folder each time a user logs in (by adding my application to the start-up folder of all users). This will make my life a lot easier during installation, but when the application is uninstalled, all those shortcuts will not be removed.
So either way, I need a way to find the SendTo folder of all users. I can scan HKEY_USERS and find the SendTo folder of each user (it might not be in the default location, the user can move it), but how do I find out the user profile's root folder? The registry has something like %USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming... for the SendTo folder. How can I figure out what %USERPROFILE% is for another user?
Thanks.
Easier approach: use the launch sequence of the exe itself to check whether the shortcut it present on launch, and create it if not.
Uninstall for all users is best handled using ActiveSetup which will run "something runnable" once for each user logging onto the machine. In your case a simple batch command could do the job.
If you do chose this uninstall approach, you must make sure that your msi installer checks for this uninstall key and deletes it on install - otherwise you have a delete operation scheduled for the shortcut the next time a user logs on.
Also keep in mind that each install should use a different entry in ActiveSetup to ensure that the shortcut creation is re-run for a user who has had it uninstalled already. This last part might be slightly incomprehensible before you read more about ActiveSetup: http://www.etlengineering.com/installer/activesetup.txt
You can create a custom action inside MSI, which will go through all user profiles and remove your shortcuts from SendTo folder. All users profile you can find, just scan all folders in %systemdrive%\Users folders in Windows7 (Vista), or Documents and Settings in Windows XP.
Or you can use ActiveSetup mechanism for this purpose, create some script (application) which remove your shortcut from SendTo folder, when user will log in to system next time.
When deleting a file in Windows Explorer (Windows 7), if admin privileges are required to delete the file, this dialog is displayed:
Is there a way to achieve this kind of effect in my app?
Currently I am launching a process 'as administrator' to perform the same sort of action (replacing a file rather than deleting it), so the user is shown the generic UAC dialog, asking:
"Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?"
Is the kind of helpful UI shown by Explorer (as opposed to the generic UAC dialog) possible in a 3rd party app?
I'm guessing no, since it would allow 3rd parties to elevate privileges in a sneaky way.
Use Button_SetElevationRequiredState to add the shield to the button. When the user pushes the button, use the COM elevation moniker to create the helper object.
The default setting on Windows 7 is for most system components to not show the UAC dialog.
If you change your setting to always prompt, you will see that clicking Continue in the Explorer dialog would create the normal UAC prompt.
As a non-system binary, your code would always prompt except at the most lenient UAC setting (never prompt.)
In matlab, I used a windows standalone application. There is a line in this application that writes a file in C:\...\...\. When I run the output exe file produced from this windows standalone application, the exe doesn't write in C:\...\...\ neither tells me that there is a security issues in that partition. All the execution does is nothing. But, when I right-click and run the exe as administrator, it runs correctly.
I want to do it without right-click and run as administrator. Are there is a command in matlab that can do that?
If you create a shortcut to your application, you can go to the Properties of the shortcut, click on Advanced in the Shortcut tab, and select "Run as administrator". That way, whenever you start the application from the shortcut it will be run as an administrator.
(Disclaimer: applications really shouldn't "foul their own nest" by writing into Program Files. This is bad design.)
Starting from Vista, unprivileged processes are not allowed to write to protected folders such as Program Files, because Program Files is designed to store code and not data. However, since this limitation has not been enforced in XP, MS has provided a backward-compatibility hack in the form of Virtual Store. Now, when a program tries to write to protected folder, its output is being redirected into a dedicated folder. This way, the program still "thinks" it writes to its usual location, while in fact it writes to an unprotected location. However, when you later check the Program Files location, you might not see the file - because it's not really there.
You can find more details here: User Account Control Data Redirection.
If you are administrator, add full control permission for your username to the destination folder. You do that by right clicking on the folder, going to properties and then security tab. Then edit and add you username with Full Control rights. Then you don;t have to run the the program as an administrator.
There is no way you can elevate a process once it is started, so Matlab cannot possibly have a command for that. Just running Matlab elevated.