Run Windows app as Administrator

Description

Sometimes you need to do adminstrative things from your Windows application. You can either force the user to “Run as Administrator”, which is annoying to the user, or you can kill this instance and restart it as admin programatically.

Code

private void Go()

    WindowsPrincipal pricipal = new WindowsPrincipal(WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent());

    bool hasAdministrativeRight = pricipal.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);

    if (!hasAdministrativeRight)

        RunElevated(Application.ExecutablePath);

        this.Close();

        Application.Exit();

    // Do your administrator stuff

private static bool RunElevated(string fileName)

    ProcessStartInfo processInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();

    processInfo.Verb = "runas";

    processInfo.FileName = fileName;

try

        Process.Start(processInfo);

        return true;

    catch (Win32Exception)

        //Do nothing. Probably the user canceled the UAC window

    return false;