Delphi 7 & Windows 7 UAC

Do you still love working with Delphi 7? I do. Delphi 7 is quite old and there are many features on the new Windows 7 that it’s not able to do. Today i faced a problem with UAC, my application needs to run under administrator account, when UAC is enabled, i can’t detect if the user is running with admin account or not. With the new application, the application can force the user to run in administrator mode when UAC is enable easily. Luckily, there is a solution on now.

1. Remove XPMan: Remove any reference to XPMan component in your project. XPMan adds a default manifest to the executable that prevents Windows to see our customized manifest. You shouldn’t be worried about XP Theme provided by XPMan, theme support is preserved in the following manifest.

2. Create the customized manifest: Create a file like Win7UAC.manifest in the project directory (the filename really doesn’t matter). add the following lines to Win7UAC.manifest:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
  <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="App" version="3.1.0.0" processorArchitecture="*"/>
  <dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
      <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" processorArchitecture="*"/>
    </dependentAssembly>
  </dependency>
  <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
    <security>
      <requestedPrivileges>
        <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false"/>
        </requestedPrivileges>
    </security>
  </trustInfo>
  <compatibility xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:compatibility.v1">
    <application>
      <!--The ID below indicates application support for Windows Vista -->
      <supportedOS Id="{e2011457-1546-43c5-a5fe-008deee3d3f0}"/>
      <!--The ID below indicates application support for Windows 7 -->
      <supportedOS Id="{35138b9a-5d96-4fbd-8e2d-a2440225f93a}"/>
    </application>
  </compatibility>
</assembly>

You can add more items to this manifest. You can also remove Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls parts to disable the theme support.

3. Compile manifest to a resource: Create a file named Win7UAC.rc in the project directory that contains one line as:

1 24 "Win7UAC.manifest"

To compile this file, go to cmd, point to project directory and run following command:

brcc32.exe Win7UAC.rc

4. Add resource (the manifest) to the project: Just add the following line anywhere you want in one of the unit files of the project:

{$R 'Win7UAC.res'}

A suitable place for adding this line is in the project main file (usually named Project1.dpr) and under the {$R *.res} line.

5. Rebuild the project

6. Remember whenever you add XPMan component to any of project units, this UAC manifest will not work properly.