How can I detect if my process is running UAC-elevated or not?

Question

My Vista application needs to know whether the user has launched it \"as administrator\" (elevated) or as a standard user (non-elevated). How can I detect that at run time?

Answer 1

I do not think elevation type is the answer you want. You just want to know if it is elevated. Use TokenElevation instead of TokenElevationType when you call GetTokenInformation. If the structure returns a positive value, the user is admin. If zero, the user is normal elevation.

Here is a Delphi solution:

function TMyAppInfo.RunningAsAdmin: boolean;
var
  hToken, hProcess: THandle;
  pTokenInformation: pointer;
  ReturnLength: DWord;
  TokenInformation: TTokenElevation;
begin
  hProcess := GetCurrentProcess;
  try
    if OpenProcessToken(hProcess, TOKEN_QUERY, hToken) then try
      TokenInformation.TokenIsElevated := 0;
      pTokenInformation := @TokenInformation;
      GetTokenInformation(hToken, TokenElevation, pTokenInformation, sizeof(TokenInformation), ReturnLength);
      result := (TokenInformation.TokenIsElevated > 0);
    finally
      CloseHandle(hToken);
    end;
  except
   result := false;
  end;
end;