Windows process launcher supporting elevate up or down, hide, wait and it's NOT a Console app (built as Windows GUI exe) which avoids creating unsightly default console window - yet will create console to show usage and debug output where requested
Elevator [options] prog [args]
-? - Shows this help
-v - debug mode
-wait - Waits until prog terminates
-hide - Launches with hidden window
-elev - specify elevation change (from host process):
name.exe - elevate same as existing name.exe
low - force low (going high to low precludes -wait option).
high - force high
-dir - working directory
-c - Launches via %COMSPEC% /s /c prog "args"
(/s removes the outer quotes and persists everything else; see 'help cmd.exe')
prog - The program to execute
args - Optional command line arguments to prog
Looking to launch DevEnv.exe to edit files from command line, with minimal UAC prompting, no matter whether DevEnv or cmd is currently elevated. Notably, DevEnv is conveniently single instance by default. There are basically 4 possible combinations of elevation going from the current cmd.exe process to the possibly running DevEnv.exe process:
| cmd | DevEnv | transition required |
|---|---|---|
| low | high | this is kinda the main typical route; no way to avoid UAC prompt |
| high | low | this required the shifting down trick, i.e. lauching by proxy thru another low process (e.g. explorer.exe) no UAC prompt required |
| low | low | really nothing special to be done here, just launch with cmd.exe's current elevation |
| high | high | ditto |
| either | not running | ditto |
Taking no credit here.
- started with jpassing/elevate
- added in Raymond Chen's approach of dropping from elevated to unelevated via Explorer->ShellExecute
- cobbled together various stack-o's attributed in the main Elevator.cpp
- notably the approach of building as a Windows GUI exe to avoid showing undesirable default console windows, yet attaching to an existing cmd.exe console if one is present.
Solution is compiling on Visual Studio 2017 v15.4.0 with Desktop C++ workload installed.
I should mention, I am not at all a C++ programmer. This code is likely to be riddled with copy-paste bugs and inefficiencies.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with DevEnv]
"icon"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2017\\Enterprise\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with DevEnv\command]
@="c:\\bin\\Elevator.exe -elev devenv.exe \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2017\\Enterprise\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe\" /edit \\\"%1\\\""
@echo off
SETLOCAL
set editor="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /edit
if exist %1 goto :skipCreate
set doNew=y
set /p doNew=Create new file? [y]
if "%doNew%"=="y" (echo.>%1) else goto :EOF
:skipCreate
Elevator -dir "%cd%" -elev %editor% \"%1\"
associate .bat files with hidden launch (use .cmd for normal operation)
assoc .bat=ElevatorHiddenBatch
ftype ElevatorHiddenBatch=c:\bin\elevator.exe -hide -c \"%1\"