Programmatic access to UAC. Kinda.

I kinda like this web site. It offers a C++ source file with various functions to help in install time situations; functions like IsVista() and IsWow64(). And it also gives some functions to deal with User Account Control. GetElevationType(), IsElevated() and RunElevated() are going to be very useful.

The killer function, though is RunNonElevated(). This is a doozy.

Picture this - I run my installer. It needs to write to C:\Program Files, so gets elevated. Trying to be as nice as I can to my user, I offer them a chance to run my program at the end of the installer, as is common. Unfortunately, since the installer is now running elevated, my newly installed program will run elevated, which is not what I want.

So this function could be very useful. The downside is that Microsoft haven't actually provided any means of running a program non-elevated, so this function has to hack around it by injecting itself into the shell, which it knows is not elevated and getting explorer to spawn the process.

Is it just mean that sees the irony in having to inject code into one process to run another process securely?