My installer requires admin privileges. During installation some values are written to the HKCU tree of the registry of the currently logged on user. However, when this user account is a so called standard account, the user has to specify credentials for an administrator account when the installer starts. The values are then written to the HKCU tree pertaining to this admin account instead of the HKCU of the currently logged on user.
The same problem arises when the installer wants to write some data to the local AppData and wants to create a shortcut on the desktop.
How do I circumvent this?
If you are asking for admin rights it normally means you are doing a system-wide/machine install for all users. When creating this type of installer it is not a good idea to write to HKCU or %USERPROFILE%, not just because you can end up performing actions for “the wrong user” but you also end up initializing the install for just that one user and not all users.
What I recommend is that you write this common data to
HKLM\Software\YourCompany\YourApp\CommonDataand/or<CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA|CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES>\YourCompany\YourApp\CommonDataand then import this data in your application the first time a user run’s it.You might also want to consider creating a per-user installer (like Chrome) but this means you can only write to HKCU and %USERPROFILE%!