[QUESTION] Possible to run application with elevated privileges

[TheFlash428]

Hello everyone.

I apologize if this has appeared before, I did a search on this subject, but pretty much every post dealt with Windows updates, and that's not really what I'm looking for.

At my office, where I am the network admin, we have this application that several people need to access. It is a type of application where a client tool resides on the local drive and files are access via a database on a shared network drive.

Here's the problem, this is a very old application and it's not built to run on Windows XP, although for all intents and purposes it works OK, but only if the user has administrator privileges on the local machine. Because the application has to make changes to a certain registry key, as well certain program and dll files, if the person trying to use the app is not in the admin group, the program crashes and spits out errors.

So what I'm looking for is a way to allow this program to run in a state of elevated privileges, without actually giving the user full administrative rights to the computer. If anyone has any ideas that would be great. I've tried several things, but none of them seem to work.

Edit: Also, I do realize there is a "run as..." function, but this won't work--I'm looking for more of way to set up a script or shortcut or something that the users could click on or run to start the application with elevated rights.

Edited October 12, 2006 by TheFlash428

[cluberti]

Why give them elevated rights, when you could simply modify the permissions on the machine to the locations the application needs? Have you tried creating a shim via the Application Compatibility toolkit for this application as well?

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...ty/default.mspx