NewsArchive
03-04-2011, 09:53 AM
This support question comes up very often: "Why are mapped drives not
visible or accessible to an elevated running application (e.g. SETUP.EXE)?"
Mapped drives are always associated with a logon session, not a machine! A
locally unique identifier (LUID) identifies a logon session and a LUID is
generated for each logon session. Because mapped drives are associated with
LUID, and elevated applications are using a different LUID generated during
a separate login event, the elevated application will no longer see any
mapped drives for this user. The elevated and non-elevated administrator
accounts have completely different logon tokens and can therefore have
different drive mappings. That means, a process running non-elevated and
another process running elevated are a part of two distinct logon sessions.
As such, if a drive was mapped in a non-elevated context, it will never be
visible to an elevated context, unless the drive is also mapped in the
elevated context.
BTW, please note that this does NOT only happen on UAC-aware (Windows Vista,
Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2) systems.
--
Friedrich Linder
Lindersoft
www.lindersoft.com
+1.954.252.3910
SetupBuilder is Windows 7 installation -- "point. click. ship"
-- Official Comodo Code Signing and SSL Certificate Partner
visible or accessible to an elevated running application (e.g. SETUP.EXE)?"
Mapped drives are always associated with a logon session, not a machine! A
locally unique identifier (LUID) identifies a logon session and a LUID is
generated for each logon session. Because mapped drives are associated with
LUID, and elevated applications are using a different LUID generated during
a separate login event, the elevated application will no longer see any
mapped drives for this user. The elevated and non-elevated administrator
accounts have completely different logon tokens and can therefore have
different drive mappings. That means, a process running non-elevated and
another process running elevated are a part of two distinct logon sessions.
As such, if a drive was mapped in a non-elevated context, it will never be
visible to an elevated context, unless the drive is also mapped in the
elevated context.
BTW, please note that this does NOT only happen on UAC-aware (Windows Vista,
Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2) systems.
--
Friedrich Linder
Lindersoft
www.lindersoft.com
+1.954.252.3910
SetupBuilder is Windows 7 installation -- "point. click. ship"
-- Official Comodo Code Signing and SSL Certificate Partner