CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#registryadminuac
John
John

Reputation: 325

Disabling UAC programmatically - Change doesn't take effect?

I created a C# application that changes the "EnableLUA" key to 0, the application is run with admin rights, and no errors pop up:

//Runs with admin rights
try 
{
RegistryKey key = 
Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System", true);
            key.SetValue("EnableLUA", "0");
            key.Close();
}
catch(Exception e)
{
    MessageBox.Show("Error: " + e);
}

The registry key indeed gets changed from 1 to 0, but even after restarting the computer, UAC is still enabled. Then when I go to Control Panel > User Account Control, the slider is turned all the way down. When pressing "Save" (and not having modified anything), UAC suddenly seems to be disabled.

Would this be a bug of some sort or just a weird kind of security? Is there any way around this?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 10471

Answers (5)

Cleiton Silva
Cleiton Silva

Reputation: 1

Despite the UAC warning that it only works after OK, this was not the behavior, windows assumed the change and disabled UAC, I tested it and it was the lack of DWORD in WINDOWS 10

Upvotes: 0

user14097641
user14097641

Reputation:

You are changing the 32bit DWORD to a string value and therefore it doesn't work

It is absolutley possible to disable uac if you just specify the valuekind to a dword like this

key.SetValue("EnableLUA", "0", RegistryValueKind.DWord);

note that you also need to run program as administrator for the program to acces hklm (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) in regedit

Tested in windows 10 and it works, i do not know if it works in win7 but let me know if it does

Upvotes: 0

NikolaTesla
NikolaTesla

Reputation: 171

This version works:

Reference:

using System.Management.Automation;

Code:

var script = PowerShell.Create();
script.AddScript("Set-ItemProperty \"HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\System\" -Name \"ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin\" -Value \"0\" ");
script.Invoke();

Upvotes: 2

Atul Kumar Gupta
Atul Kumar Gupta

Reputation: 7

You can simply Remove the UAC prompt by writing two line of code,

string UAC_key = @"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System";
Registry.SetValue(UAC_key, "EnableLUA", 0);`

Upvotes: -1

Ryan Mann
Ryan Mann

Reputation: 5357

UAC can't be disabled programatically, it's designed to prevent such an act. The whole point to UAC was to make it impossible for anything other than user interaction to bypass/disable it.

Sure, you can set the registry key to 0, and you can see the slider moved, but unless the user is actually the one causing that action (commiting it with OK) it won't update.

UAC operates at a low level of the OS, your code would have to be running in the kernel level to be able to disable UAC, running as admin isn't enough. And Execute Disable Bit in modern bios's will prevent your code from injecting into the kernel with any kind of method (e.g. buffer overflows)

A better solution would be to detect if UAC is enabled and direct the user on how to turn it off.

Unless you want to do something really wacky, like programatically open the screen to disable uac and simulate mouse input to click the slider down to none and click ok.

Upvotes: 4

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