Vista UAC - handle privileges elevation

Question

Hi guys,
I've been having some trouble with one of the application I have to maintain.
Some things that might be needed in order to understand my needs:
- it is a java web start application
- it embbeds a few Windows applications that we did not develop
- it has to be able to run those embedded applictions. This requires elevation of privileges through a runtime.exec() call.
At the very first execution, since this is a java web start application, they will get the error saying "this operation couldn't be performed. you need to run this software as administrator".
Up until now, we tell our customers to "right click -> execute as administrator" on the application icon on the desktop, but I really don't like this.
I would prefer to ask for an elevation only for procedures needing those rights.
I know that one of the main issue is that the java VM is run with user privileges only, so any attempt to create a child process will end up with the very same privileges (leading to the error code 740 I always get for now when calling runtime.exec() ).
Is there a "sexy" way to implement privileges elevation programmatically in Java?
If not, is there a plan in the Java VM development to implement this kind of call? (please correct me if I'm wrong) Even though I realise this really is OS specific, it is impossible to do with the tools we have at hand currently. I also suppose that this UAC will have the same behaviour or a really close to the one in Vista in the coming Windows Seven.
Some things that would be pretty neat:
- add the "Vista elevation needed flag" to the Manifest contained in a Jar file, as an OS specific parameter
- add the "Vista elevation needed flag" to the JNLP file, as an OS specific parameter
Many thanks in advance for any help,
Cheers
Eric

Answer 1

jschell wrote:
Caffeine0001 wrote:
You can also add a manifest to those embedded applications. See [http://community.bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/archive/2006/10/28/Windows-Vista-_2D00_-Demand-UAC-elevation-for-an-application-by-adding-a-manifest-using-mt.exe.aspx]. Also found with the above google search.
Not quite sure how that helps?
The "manifest" in that isn't a java manifest. It requires a windows executable.
You can of course wrap a java app into a JNI C executable. Is that what you had in mind?That would work too. What I had in mind was the embedded Windows Applications the OP was referring to.
I did a test using jre-6u11-windows-i586-p.exe and it seems to worked.
public class RunExecTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(args);
        pb.redirectErrorStream(true);
        Process p = pb.start();
        stream(p.getInputStream(), System.out);
        System.exit(p.exitValue());
    public static void stream(InputStream in, OutputStream out) throws IOException {
        // Copy the input stream to the output stream
        byte buffer[] = new byte[1024];
        int len;
        while ((len = in.read(buffer))!=-1) {
            out.write(buffer, 0, len);
        out.flush();
}java -cp . RunExecTest cmd /c jre-6u11-windows-i586-p.exe