I have a fairly simple batch file which does just one thing – "net start myservice". This batch file gets shortcut-ed in a program group by installer so that users can simply click on the icon and get things started (or stopped). All works well in XP for the users with admin rights. But things get hairy on Win7 as the batch need to be run "as administrator" explicitly and often users don't know this. So my question is how to make this friendly? Telling users to right click and run as admin on Win7 and simply click on XP is kind of weird twist. I need a smart automatic simple thingy.
I could probably use "runas/user:administrator" in the batch itself, but this "administrator" account might not be available on some machines. I'm looking for a universal solution for installing things like this on any Windows box.
Ideas? How would you do this?
Best Answer
Download the Elevation PowerToys for Windows from Microsoft. You can then include scripts in your install process so that you can run from the batch file
elevate net start servicenameand it will give them a UAC elevation prompt. As long as the user has administrative privileges on the computer or can get an administator to perform the elevation for them, it will run the command with elevated privileges and should work just fine. No need to specify a username or anything. There is a whole section in that article about creating a script that can detect if it is running with a sufficient access level, and if not, elevating itself.