Creating a Delphi 7 application that triggers UAC

If you are still creating Delphi 7 applications, then you may have had problems with UAC in Windows Vista, 7 and 2008, your application launches but is unable to eg. access the HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE hive of the registry, what you need is to have the application launch with Administrative rights.

You could just rightclick on the application icon and choose “Run as administrator” however this is hardly professional for a program you distribute to others.

Well, it took a bit of Googling and a bit of experimenting, but here’s the recipe to creating UAC aware applications in Delphi 7.

• First, create a new application and save the project.
  In the project directory you just created create 2 files;
  .
• The first file “UAC.MANIFEST” should look like this;
  —————————————————————————–
  <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ standalone=”yes”?>
  <assembly xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1″ manifestVersion=”1.0″>
  <assemblyIdentity version=”1.0.0.0″ processorArchitecture=”*” name=”UACAwareApplication” type=”win32″/>
  <trustInfo xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3″>
  <security>
  <requestedPrivileges>
  <requestedExecutionLevel level=”requireAdministrator”/>
  </requestedPrivileges>
  </security>
  </trustInfo>
  </assembly>
  —————————————————————————–
  .
• Second file “vistaprog.rc” should look like this;
  —————————————————————————–
  1 24 uac.manifest
  —————————————————————————–
  (yes it’s only one line)
  .
• Now you need to compile the “vistaprog.rc” file.
  you do this by running the “brcc32.exe” (found in the Delphi Bin directory) with this parameter “brcc32.exe vistaprog.rc“, this will compile a “vistaprog.res” file (this is a bit different/easier on Delphi 2007 etc, see links at the bottom for more details).
  .
• Now you will need to modify your Delphi project.
  In the “unit1.pas” file find {$R *.dfm} and insert {$R ‘vistaprog.res’} just below it, save the project and compile it.

You application is now Vista/Windows 7/2008 UAC aware, you will also notice that a small shield is added to the application icon.

When you run your application it will look aimilar to this;

Read more here;
http://www.zhou73.cn/index.php/article/zhou73/2009-02-18/195.html
http://www.zhou73.cn/index.php/article/zhou73/2009-02-18/196.html
http://ruminatedrumblings.blogspot.com/2008/03/vista-uac-manifest.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Pascal/Delphi/Q_22755023.html

LigHTTPd an alternative to IIS

Want to try something else than IIS, Apache on a Windows platform?  Lighttpd may be worth a look

I actually stumbled across lighttpd when I was installing applications on my jailbroken Ipod touch, and it looked interesting…

I found a blogpost with getting started instructions;
http://www.winstonyw.com/2008/05/28/installing-lighttpd-and-php-on-windows/

I did not quite get PHP working just yet nor did I find out how to start the http server as a service, but there are tricks to running an app as a service so this should not be a showstopper.

How secure is it?  Well take a look here for advisories; http://secunia.com/advisories/search/?search=lighttpd

And now with no further delay here is the getting started guide (taken from the blog previously mentioned) with my comments; Read more »

SUN VirtualBox

SUN has a free virtualization platform called SUN VirtualBox, so whats new in that you might wander – many companies offer virtualization these days!?  The cool thing here is the word “Free” and lets add “Fast” to make it interesting, the solution is not only free it’s also fast and even somewhat compatible with Microsofts virtual pc format (it can import a .VHD file and start it without much hassle).

So if you are into a free, fast and quite well working Virtualization solution then take a look at “VirtualBox” from SUN.

http://www.virtualbox.org

Source;  I heard this ‘tip’ on the Windows Weekly podcast at Twit.

AutoIT3 – Excellent scripting tool

If you once in a while work with installing software, then you HAVE to check this out.

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/scite

It is a scripting language that will make it very easy to install and modify installed software installations, it uses a very intuitive VB variant that is very easy to understand and the help is just wonderful.  One of the VERY neat features is that once you have completed your install script you simply compile it and viola you have an .exe file, thus you can simply add an install.exe file to the package you wish to distribute and the enduser do not need to have any scripting engine etc. installed, it IS neat..

So you might think, “well if its a VB vaiant, why not just make the whole thing as a VB-Script” – well you could – but have you ever tried to access files/registry etc via a VB script, well sure it is possible but the code quickly become unnessesary complex, this scripting language is straight out of the bag – copyfile( from, to) as easy as that.

The scripting engine has support for;
System variabels (eg. @StartMenu = location of startmenu, @StartMenuCommonDir = location of All users start menu etc etc.)
File management (copy / delete / move files)
Directory management (copy / delete / move directories)
Registry access (read write)
Replay keystrokes

and a whole lot more..

This is from the introduction in the help file;
Easy to learn BASIC-like syntax
Simulate keystrokes and mouse movements
Manipulate windows and processes
Interact with all standard windows controls
Scripts can be compiled into standalone executables
Create Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)
COM support
Regular expressions
Directly call external DLL and Windows API functions
Scriptable RunAs functions
Detailed helpfile and large community-based support forums
Compatible with Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT4 / 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008
Unicode and x64 support
Digitally signed for peace of mind
Works with Windows Vista’s User Account Control (UAC)

Inspiration;
If you are interested I have created an uninstall script for McAfee Virus Scan and ePO agent,

you can download it here for inspiration;
http://www.kanmandet.dk/downloads/McAfee_Uninstall.au3 
or the compiled EXE version here
http://www.kanmandet.dk/downloads/McAfee_Uninstall.exe

For more on uninstalling McAfee Virus Scan and ePO please see http://www.kanmandet.dk/?p=147

Geographical IP information

Interested in working with identifying where an IP originates from geographically?  Maybe for your website (you could localise the display or whatever) or maybe for your applications?  Actually I heard about this in connection to how the Conficker worm/virus works, Conficker actually use this database to orient itself, yeah I know it’s a crazy world out there

Both a free and a payable version is available, I haven’t looked into the API yet – but if you are into web development then this is not likely to ruin your day.

http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

Creating and using a custom Policy file (adm template)

So you for some reason or other need a custom GroupPolicy template (.adm template) to set some strange setting for some odd software.

You can use a Policy.ADM file to set custom registry values either for your own pc (may seem like a bit overkill) or more likely for your domain.

Well I have created a few of these back in the good old NT4 days and it was not all that difficult once you got the hang of it, and thus when I had the need again lately I was confident I could get it to work without too much of a hassle.

I was wrong :-/

Ok, creating a simple policy.adm file is easy;

And if you enter a keyname like;
”SoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftwhatever”

Things will work brilliantly, however lets say you want to change some obscure value for the adobe reader!?  This is outside the “Policies” section of the registry.. things will look like this when you enter the GPM MMC console.

This is where I lost my temper and started cursing at my monitor, see again once I put “Policies” in the keyname everything worked like a charm (but my setting was NOT in the Policy region of the registry)..

So Google to the rescue, it would seem that things have changed since the good old Poledit days, and that you need to do a bit of editor tweaking to get those ‘dirty’ settings available under NT4+ systems now-er-days.

Here is the secret;

 
View, Filtering, “Only show policy settings that can be fully managed”..

Once this is done you can see everything – just like in the good old days

Also it’s worth noting the other filter settings, I did not even know they existed, now you can actually limit your view to only those settings that are set, and this DO make it a lot easier to overlook the more complex policies.

Good luck making your new policies its easy as pie you know..

Links;
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/12009443/m/645000852731/inc/-1
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/ADM-Template-Repository.html
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738443.aspx