I love writing scripts, however, User Account Control (UAC) can sometimes be a pain in the neck which is why I have looked for ways around scripting in customer environments that have UAC enabled. The following are my current solutions:
VBScripts and UAC elevation
With User Account Control (UAC) enabled, one needs to open an elevated Command Prompt in order to run scripts under administrative privileges. Although the elevated Command Prompt accomplishes the task, how do you run as script under elevated privileges, without using the Command Prompt?
Applications can make use of manifest files (using RequireAdministrator flag) to show the elevation dialog when run. As far as I know, there is no such option for scripts. Using the ShellExecute method, you can elevate a script by passing the runas parameter. Use one of these methods to run VBScripts elevated.
Method 1 (Without Prompt)
This re-launches the current VBScript as administrator (elevated) if the script has no command-line arguments passed. When re-launching the script as administrator, simply pass a bogus argument so that the script does not run in a cyclic loop.
If WScript.Arguments.length =0 Then
Set objShell = CreateObject(“Shell.Application”)
‘Pass a bogus argument with leading blank space, say [ uac]
objShell.ShellExecute “wscript.exe”, Chr(34) & _
WScript.ScriptFullName & Chr(34) & ” uac”, “”, “runas”, 1
Else
‘Add your code here
End If
Method 2 (With Prompt)
This method uses a stub or wrapper script which runs the main VBScript elevated using the runas verb.
Set objShell = CreateObject(“Shell.Application”)
Set FSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
strPath = FSO.GetParentFolderName (WScript.ScriptFullName)
If FSO.FileExists(strPath & “\MAIN.VBS”) Then
objShell.ShellExecute “wscript.exe”, _
Chr(34) & strPath & “\MAIN.VBS” & Chr(34), “”, “runas”, 1
Else
MsgBox “Script file MAIN.VBS not found”
End If
You will see see the UAC elevation dialog.
Once user clicks Continue to approve, the main script is launched, which runs under administrator privileges.
-Pablo
