'How can I tell if my process is running as Administrator?

I would like to display some extra UI elements when the process is being run as Administrator as opposed to when it isn't, similar to how Visual Studio 2008 displays 'Administrator' in its title bar when running as admin. How can I tell?

c++sharp.netprocessprivileges


Solution 1:[1]

I think this is a good simple mechanism.

using System.Security.Principal;

WindowsIdentity identity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
WindowsPrincipal principal = new WindowsPrincipal(identity);
bool isAdmin = principal.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);

Solution 2:[2]

Here's a one liner to do it.

using System.Security.Principal;

static bool IsElevated => new WindowsPrincipal(WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent()).IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);

Solution 3:[3]

I felt it important to note the difficulty I had with attempting to use WellKnownSidType.BuiltinAdministratorsSid per casperOne's answer above. According to the WellKnownSiDType MSDN, BuiltinAdministratorsSid "Indicates a SID that matches the administrator account." So I would expect casperOne's code to work, and guess it likely does in some environments. Unfortunately, it didn't on my Windows 2003 with .NET 2.0 (legacy code). It actually returned S-1-5-32-544 which, according to this article is the sid for the Administrators group. Thus, the comparison fails for me. I will have to do my own string comparison for startswith "S-1-5-21" (that kb 243330 indicates the "21" is included even though the blog referenced above does not) and endswith "500".

Solution 4:[4]

I hope you solved it, I was looking for someone smart to solve my NamedPipe permission issue, perhaps someone in 2022 likes my answer to your 13-year-old question...

using .net 6.0 > win7 or later ...

Perhaps do something like this and test if what you see makes sense on your account:

var user = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
if (user is not null)
{

    logger.LogInformation("{User}", user.Name);
    foreach (var item in Enum.GetValues<WellKnownSidType>())
    {
        try
        {
            var sid = new SecurityIdentifier(item, user.Owner);
            logger.LogInformation($"IsIsWellKnown({item}): {user.Claims.Any(a=> a.Value == sid.Value)}");
        }
        catch { }
    }
}

then if it does you can use something like this:

public static bool Is(WindowsIdentity user, WellKnownSidType type)
{
    var sid = new SecurityIdentifier(type, user.Owner);
    return user.Claims.Any(a => a.Value == sid.Value);
}

You could be really smart about it and make an extension method by adding the this keyword

public static bool Is(this WindowsIdentity user, WellKnownSidType type)
{
    var sid = new SecurityIdentifier(type, user.Owner);
    return user.Claims.Any(a => a.Value == sid.Value);
}

You could then use it like so:

WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Is(WellKnownSidType.AccountDomainAdminsSid))

Solution 5:[5]

I use simple try catch statement to create a random file in "C:\Windows\" folder. If it errors out the app is running with normal privileges otherwise it is running as admin privileges.

        try
        {
            File.Create(string.Format(@"C:\Windows\{0}.txt", new Guid()), 0, FileOptions.DeleteOnClose);
            // Do as admin
        }
        catch
        {
            // Do as default
        }

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Kenn
Solution 2 Bryan Legend
Solution 3 tbradt
Solution 4 Walter Verhoeven
Solution 5 Soumya Mahunt

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