Question

I’m researching on how to add a shortcut in the windows context menu to my application. I came across this article and I tried it out. This is the code it uses to create a key in the registry.

private void btnAddMenu_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    RegistryKey regmenu = null;
    RegistryKey regcmd = null;
    try
    {
        regmenu = Registry.ClassesRoot.CreateSubKey(MenuName);
        if(regmenu != null)
            regmenu.SetValue("",this.txtName.Text);
        regcmd = Registry.ClassesRoot.CreateSubKey(Command);
        if(regcmd != null)
                regcmd.SetValue("",this.txtPath.Text);
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(this,ex.ToString());
    }
    finally       
    {
        if(regmenu != null)
            regmenu.Close();
        if(regcmd != null)
            regcmd.Close();
    }        
}

The problem is if I run it through my Administrator account, it works fine. But when I do it through a different account which doesn’t have admin privileges, it throws this exception.

system.unauthorizedaccessexception access to the registry key is denied

Now if I were to use this code in one of my own applications to create a shortcut in the context menu, I can’t be sure every user would run it as the Administrator, right?

Is there any way in C# to escalate the user privileges when creating the registry key?

If you know any other way to add an item to the windows context menu, I’d be interested in them too.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You cannot escalate permissions as such (at least I’d like to know about it, but doesn’t seem possible as yet), but you need to run / start your app (embed into manifest) elevated.
Please take a look at these entries…
How do I force my .NET application to run as administrator?
Elevating process privilege programatically?
I’d suggest what comments said, running that from the setup. Or let your app run as admin from the start, or possibly jump start an elevated process from your app – when needed (e.g. running another exe of yours that has its manifest properly).