How to detect whether Vista UAC is enabled?

Question

I need my application to behave differently depending on whether Vista UAC is enabled or not. How can my application detect the state of UAC on the user\'s computer?

Answer 1

For anyone else that finds this and is looking for a VBScript solution. Here is what I came up with to detect if UAC is enabled and if so relaunch my script with elevated privileges. Just put your code in the Body() function. I found there were problems with transportability between XP and Windows 7 if I wrote code to always launch elevated. Using this method I bypass the elevation if there is no UAC. Should also take into account 2008 and above server versions that have UAC enabled.

On Error Resume Next
UACPath = "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA"
Dim WshShell
Set WshShell = CreateObject("wscript.Shell")
UACValue = WshShell.RegRead(UACPath)
If UACValue = 1 Then
'Run Elevated
    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
      WScript.Quit
    Else 
        Body()
    End If
Else
Body()
End If

Function Body()
MsgBox "This is the body of the script"
End Function