如何使安装文件（由 IExpress 制成）在另一台计算机上以管理员身份运行

Question

I made a custom install program for a product our company develops. Because we deal with customers that don't understand zip files, I've created an IExpress executable that unzips everything and launches the setup.exe

The problem I'm facing is that my setup program needs admin credentials (checking registry to see if keys exist, executing a batch script, etc). Up until now I've always informed customers to right-click and select "Run as Administrator". Is there a way to do this automatically, so I don't have to instruct them to right-click? Customers don't like following instructions.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In the app.manifest of any C# solution there is a requestedExecutionLevel key. Changing the value of this key to requireAdministrator will always run that application as an administrator. However, this means if a user that doesn't have admin access can't run that application. Alternatively you can set it to highestAvailable which will run for all users but if the user has admin rights then it will run as admin. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I will simply expand on what rmn36 has said. To make an IExpress generated self-extracting CAB package request for admin privileges immediately on execution, use Visual Studio (Community version 2019 works) to edit the manifest of the executable.

From Visual Studio: File->Open your executable. Open (click the + sign to the left of) the manifest (Windows 10 IExpress labels this RT_MANIFEST). There should be a '1' underneath RT_MANIFEST, double-click on it to bring up the editor. Place your cursor in the right-hand column with the text to edit normally instead of in hex. You can insert, delete, etc. even though you see binary; it is not fixed length.

Locate the requestedExecutionLevel key and set the level property as shown (by default it is set to "asInvoker"):

 <requestedExecutionLevel
          level="requireAdministrator"

Save the executable and now users no longer need to right-click and "Run as Administrator" - Windows automatically prompts.