Question

I have a process that needs to run under administrative privileges. I need the average joe to run the process, but I don’t want to give everyone access… so I’ve created a simple class that will run this ONE task as an administrator, using impersonation.

The code is VERY striaght-forward, but I can’t understand why this is crashing. HELP??!!

I’m running this via a batch file, and I’ve even copied the file that needs to execute to the local hard drive, thinking this might be a permission issue for running an app over the network.

    public static Process ImpersonateProcess(string exe, string args, string Username, string Password)     {         ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo(exe);         psi.Arguments = args;         psi.UseShellExecute = false;         psi.UserName = Username;          psi.Password = new SecureString();          foreach (char c in Password.ToCharArray())         {             psi.Password.AppendChar(c);         }          Process proc = null;          Console.WriteLine('starting...');         proc = Process.Start(psi);         Console.WriteLine('started');          return proc;     } 

In the code above, I never get to ‘started’. It throws an error in the Process.Start(psi) and with an error message of ‘the directory name is invalid.’

Answer 1

It could be because you’re not setting the WorkingDirectory property. According to the docs:

Important Note:

The WorkingDirectory property must be set if UserName and Password are provided. If the property is not set, the default working directory is %SYSTEMROOT%\system32.