Question

I am trying to programmatically add a user like this below but get an access denied message on the Save. I’m running locally on Windows 7 and the code resides in a console app.

/// <summary>
/// 
/// </summary>
/// <param name="userName"></param>
/// <param name="password"></param>
/// <param name="description"></param>
public static void CreateUser(string userName, string password, string description)
{
    PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Machine, null);
    System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal u = new UserPrincipal(pc);
    u.SetPassword(password);
    u.Name = userName;
    u.Description = description;
    u.UserCannotChangePassword = true;
    u.PasswordNeverExpires = true;
    u.Save();

    GroupPrincipal gp = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(pc, "Users");
    gp.Members.Add(u);
    gp.Save();
}

Any ideas? I tried supplying an administrators username and password and still get the same error.

The console app gets executed like this:

 ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
                    startInfo.UserName = userName;
                    startInfo.Password = securePassword;
                    startInfo.LoadUserProfile = true;
                    startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
                    startInfo.FileName = batchPath;
                    startInfo.Arguments = operationLogID.ToString();
                    Process.Start(startInfo);

Here is a rough view of how the code is set up:

• Console App test harness gets executed in debug mode.
• I check for a user and if they don’t exist..then I try and create it shown above. This is where the error occurs.

Answer 1

Even if you’re logged in as admin, you need to run your console as admin. Here’s how to launch a console as admin: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/run-a-command-as-administrator-from-the-windows-vista-run-box/.

Then find your console app and run it.

Good luck!

-Michael