Can a process elevate itself after startup?

Question

Is it possible for a process to gain administrator priviledges after it has started? If so, how?

Examples should be in C or C++.

Edit - Examples should also use umanaged code.

Answer 1

You cannot elevate the permissions of a process while the process is running. the common way around this is to spawn a new process with elevated permissions when required. This process then does the work that requires higher privileges and then quits, releasing control back to the main process. You should be able to make it fairly seamless by setting the new processes parent window to that of the main process window.

The other alternative is relaunch the main program with the required permissions.

There is an article on UAC in Vista with C++ examples that looks quite in depth.