How Can Python Scripts Achieve UAC Elevation for Privileged Operations?

Elevating Python Scripts to Overcome UAC

Requesting User Account Control (UAC) elevation from within a Python script is crucial for certain operations, such as copying files on Vista. When scripts are executed from a non-elevated command prompt, file operations can fail due to UAC restrictions.

Detecting Elevated status:

import ctypes, sys

def is_admin():

try:
    return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
except:
    return False

if is_admin():

# Code to be executed with admin privileges

Elevating Script:

If the script detects it is not elevated, it can elevate itself using:

ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1)

Advantages:

• No external libraries required
• Works on both Python 2 and Python 3
• No file resource or manifest modifications
• Prevents repetitive execution

Additional considerations:

• The return value of the elevation call can be checked for errors.
• The display method of the spawned process can be adjusted.
• Documentation for the underlying ShellExecute call is available.

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