Tapan's Slate

Adding UAC elevation manifest in Visual C++ 8.0/ Visual Studio 2005 C or C++ project

tapanpandey — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:15:41 +0000

To add application manifest to a C or C++ application in Visual Studio 2005 so that Vista automatically display the elevation dialog while the application launch do the following steps:

Open the notepad and write down following statement to the file

version=”1.0.0.0″
processorArchitecture=”X86″
name=”Microsoft.Windows.EnableUAC”
type=”win32″/>

level=”requireAdministrator”
uiAccess=”false”/>
Save the file as .exe.manifest into the res folder of your project.
Click Project submenu, select Properties command in your Visual Studio IDE.
In Properties, select Manifest Tool command, and then select Input and Output.
Add in the name of your application manifest file under Additional manifest files.
Rebuild your application.
If you have adding the elevation script properly then you can see vista shield icon overlay with your app icon in output folder.
Run the application to test the elevation. Make sure that you have not disabled the UAC for current user.

Posted in Computing, Visual Studio, Windows Vista Tagged: visual studio 2005 manifest, visual studio add manifest

Adding UAC elevation manifest in Visual C++ 7.1 project

tapanpandey — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:48:09 +0000

To add application manifest so that Vista automatically display the elevation dialog while the application launch do the following steps:

Open the notepad and write down following statement to the file

version=”1.0.0.0″
processorArchitecture=”X86″
name=”Microsoft.Windows.EnableUAC”
type=”win32″/>

level=”requireAdministrator”
uiAccess=”false”/>
Save the file as .exe.manifest into the res folder of your project.
Now click Project-> Add Resource
Click Import command button, select .exe.manifest from the res folder.
Write RT_MANIFEST in Resource type for Custom Resource Type dialog box.
Go to Properties and change ID property to 1.
Similarly set Language property to Neutral selecting from combo box.
Save the application resources and build the project.
If you have adding the elevation script properly then you can see vista shield icon overlay with your app icon in output folder.
Run the application to test the elevation. Make sure that you have not disabled the UAC for current user.

Posted in Computing, Visual Studio, Windows Vista Tagged: UAC manifest, VC++ 7.1, Windows Vista

Windows Vista and User credentials

tapanpandey — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:35:58 +0000

In Windows NT based operating systems like Windows 2000, Windows XP a program just cannot access or write to any location e.g. registry. The NT based OS defines user credentials for the logged in user which is set of certain access control rights for the given user. These access control rights checks if a user can be granted permission or not if he tries to write to or access a protected resource.

Whenever a user account is created the new user is assigned to a particular group. A group defines the access control rights of a particular set of users. By default all the users in the Windows XP are Administrators (Administrators have largest set of default permissions and can modify OS environment and other users). This can lead to potential threat to the system.

Windows Vista however defines its users to be limited privileged users. Even administrators in Vista are limited privileged users by default. How ever they can elevate their access level.

When a standard user logs into machine and performs a task requiring administrative privileges (for example deleting a file, installing a software etc.) he/ she is provided with a “Credential prompt” window prompting to enter admin username and password. If the user fails to do so the task does not run.

When a user having administrator privileges logs into the system then two tokens are created for the user. One is standard token having limited rights and a full access token used only when user elevates to full access. In this case when task requires admin privileges the user is provided with “elevation prompt” window that on clicking elevates the user rights.

Type of tokens levels that Vista defines

TokenElevatonTypeDefault
Standard users are assigned token that authenticate them to the system with a default elevation type. These token does not have a linked full access token like as in case of admin group users and users have a limited access into the system.

TokenElevationTypeFull
The user is normally a member of the Admin group and the token is a filtered out token from a full access token. It is more like a standard user token. The token has an associated full access token that has all admin rights and privileges enabled for it.

TokenElevationTypeLimited
Normally Admin group or Backup Operators are assigned token that has full privileges assigned to it. This token normally has a linked token associated with it having filtered privileges.

Posted in Computing Tagged: UAC, User Credentials, Windows Vista

Message Box API with variable number of arguments…

tapanpandey — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:33:26 +0000

Many times we need to display formatted text (like in sprintf or printf) in a message box. Here is an sample implementation to pass variable number of arguments to the message box API.

#include

void varMessageBox( TCHAR * varCaption, TCHAR *varFormat, … )
{
                TCHAR szMsgBuffer [1024]; // formatted text holder. Size should be enough to hold formatted text
                va_list vaList;
                va_start (vaList, varFormat);
                _vstprintf(szMsgBuffer, varFormat, vaList);
               va_end (vaList);
               MessageBox (NULL, szMsgBuffer, varCaption, 0);
}

Posted in Computing

Visual Studio icons are here…

tapanpandey — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:12:51 +0000

I had multiple versions of VS installed on my system. Few of my .vcproj files were showing no icons and I felt it very frustrating. Instead I tried to find the location where VS icons are stored. After a while I came across VSFileHandler.dll. This is a .dll file located at %ProgramFiles%/Common Files/microsoft shared/MSEnv folder in any local machine having VS installed.

VSFileHandler.dll description (as on my machine)

Name : VSFileHandler.dll

Type : Application Extension

Description : Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File Extension Handler

If you open this file in any icon viewer software you can see the whole set of icon supported by your version of Visual Studio.

Posted in Computing