In Windows 7, "Run as Administrator" does not run as Administrator when UAC is turned off

Question

When I run my c# Windows Forms Application on Windows 7 with:

• A user in the "Users" group that is not in the Administrators group
• On a machine where User Account Control is turned off
• By right-clicking the EXE and selecting "Run as Administrator"

This code:

WindowsPrincipal pricipal = new WindowsPrincipal(WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent()); bool hasAdministrativeRight = pricipal.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);

still returns false. Is this expected behaviour?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure if the user is not an Administrator, Run As Administrator is not going to elevate that user's context for that application to that of Administrator. That would be a terrible security hole and end-run around enforced security of keeping users as normal users.