Recently I was developing an application that played around with my services.  I kept running into the access denied message.  After some research I found out it was related to UAC.

After compiling the application and right-clicking to run as administrator, I wanted something that would force my app to be run as administrator automatically…. thus my search began:

The solution came from Judah Himango on the following post:  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/227187/uac-need-for-console-application

To implement what he’s talking about do the following:

1. Download and install the Windows SDK from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11310

This SDK contains the MT command referenced in Judah’s response.

 

2. Add a program manifest to your application:

 

3. Modify the manifest to reflect the new “requireAdministrator” status as below:

 

2. Paste in the following line in your projects post-build step under Visual Studio:

(for 64-bit systems)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\mt.exe" -manifest "$(ProjectDir)$(TargetName).exe.manifest" -updateresource:"$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).exe;#1"

 

(for 32-bit systems)

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\mt.exe" -manifest "$(ProjectDir)$(TargetName).exe.manifest" -updateresource:"$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).exe;#1"

 

 

Compile and you’re done.  On Windows 7, vista and 2008 (r2), you should see a little shield next to your icon indicating that administrator privileges are required to run your app.

 

Hope this helps others out there!   Let me know by posting your comment below.