CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#windowspermissionsadministrator
Tono Nam
Tono Nam

Reputation: 36080

Start process as system user

I was trying to read some values from some registry keys with code (c#) on windows and I found out that the reason why I was not able to read the values was because the admin user did not had permissions:

So I manually navegated to the registry key that was giving me trouble and this is how the permissions tab looked like:

enter image description here

So that made me thought about how can I run a process as the user "system"? That sounds weird but apparently there is a system user right? I know how to run as administrator but maybe it is also possible to run as system.

Edit

here is my code. Basically I will like to traverse through all the registry keys:

class Program
{
    // class to store reg key.
    [Serializable]
    [DebuggerDisplay("Name = {Name}, Val = {value}, type={type}")]
    class MyRegKey
    {
        public string Name;
        public object value;
        public RegistryValueKind type;
        public List<MyRegKey> SubKeys = new List<MyRegKey>();
        public List<MyRegKey> Values = new List<MyRegKey>();
    }

    static MyRegKey root = new MyRegKey();

    static void TraverseTree(RegistryKey key, MyRegKey temp)
    {
        foreach (var v in key.GetValueNames())
        {            
            var kind = key.GetValueKind(v);
            var value = key.GetValue(v, null);
            var name = v;

            temp.Values.Add(new MyRegKey { Name = name, value = value, type = kind });
        }

        var x = key.GetSubKeyNames();
        for (var i = 0; i < x.Length; i++)
        {
            RegistryKey productKey;
            productKey = key.OpenSubKey(x[i], false); // <--------- Code crashes here

            if (productKey != null)
            {
                var y = new MyRegKey() { Name = productKey.Name };
                temp.SubKeys.Add(y);
                Foo(productKey, y);
            }
        }        
    }

    public static void Main()
    {

        var key = Registry.LocalMachine;

        root.Name = key.Name;
        TraverseTree(key, root);
    }
}

I am running that code as an administrator...

And here is an image of how my program crashes stating that I don't have permissions: enter image description here

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5770

Answers (1)

Serg
Serg

Reputation: 2180

PsExec -s run remote process in the System account

C:\Windows\system32>psexec -i -d -s cmd

PsExec v1.98 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com


cmd started on SERGMATCOMP with process ID 5356.

Output from the cmd with PID5356

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>whoami
nt authority\system

Upvotes: 2

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