Inno Setup desktop shortcut (link) which has “Run as administrator” advanced property set

Question

I am struggling to get Inno setup (5.5.9u) to created a desktop shortcut that has an icon and has the advanced property of \"Run as administrator\" set.

Answer 1

First, make sure you have a very good reason to run your application with Administrator privileges. User applications should not need Administrator privileges. If they need it, its usually a sign of a bad design. One common (bad) reason to want an application to run with Administrator privileges, is that the application needs to write to its installation folder.

See Application does not work when installed with Inno Setup

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Inno Setup does not natively support creating a shortcut with "Run as Administrator" flag set.

The "Run as Administrator" flag is a bit the .lnk file. See:

• LinkFlags in [MS-SHLLINK]: Shell Link (.LNK) Binary File Format;
• How to create a Run As Administrator shortcut using Powershell;
• How can I use JScript to create a shortcut that uses "Run as Administrator"

You can set the bit using the following code:

[Icons]
Name: "{userdesktop}\My Program"; Filename: "{app}\MyProg.exe"; \
  AfterInstall: SetElevationBit('{userdesktop}\My Program.lnk')

[Code]

procedure SetElevationBit(Filename: string);
var
  Buffer: string;
  Stream: TStream;
begin
  Filename := ExpandConstant(Filename);
  Log('Setting elevation bit for ' + Filename);

  Stream := TFileStream.Create(FileName, fmOpenReadWrite);
  try
    Stream.Seek(21, soFromBeginning);
    SetLength(Buffer, 1);
    Stream.ReadBuffer(Buffer, 1);
    Buffer[1] := Chr(Ord(Buffer[1]) or $20);
    Stream.Seek(-1, soFromCurrent);
    Stream.WriteBuffer(Buffer, 1);
  finally
    Stream.Free;
  end;
end;

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Tested on Unicode version of Inno Setup (the only version as of Inno Setup 6). But it should, even more naturally, work on Ansi version too.