Request UAC elevation in Go

Is there any way to elevate a new process or thread to administrator in Go?

It seems like ShellExecute() isn't available in Go and it isn't possible to elevate with CreateProcess(). I have no idea what else could be possible.

You can try and check the project w32: it has a shell32.go ShellExecute() that could be useful.

> w32 is a wrapper of windows apis for the Go Programming Language.
>
> It wraps win32 apis to "Go style" to make them easier to use.

Update 2020, since 2014, the package golang.org/x/sys/windows does have a ShellExecute() function.

Cliven mentions Jeremy Black's blog post "Relaunch Windows Golang program with UAC elevation when admin rights needed"

• Jeremy first detects if the program is already running as admin by attempting to open \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 (per this reddit suggestion)

  _, err := os.Open("\\\\.\\PHYSICALDRIVE0")
  

• Then Jeremy uses the ShellExecute() function, to call runas (described in "Elevating During Runtime" from Michael Haephrati)

  func runMeElevated() {
      verb := "runas"
      exe, _ := os.Executable()
      cwd, _ := os.Getwd()
      args := strings.Join(os.Args[1:], " ")
  
      verbPtr, _ := syscall.UTF16PtrFromString(verb)
      exePtr, _ := syscall.UTF16PtrFromString(exe)
      cwdPtr, _ := syscall.UTF16PtrFromString(cwd)
      argPtr, _ := syscall.UTF16PtrFromString(args)
  
      var showCmd int32 = 1 //SW_NORMAL
  
      err := windows.ShellExecute(0, verbPtr, exePtr, argPtr, cwdPtr, showCmd)
      if err != nil {
    	  fmt.Println(err)
      }
  }
  

CreateProcess() does not support running elevated processes, but there is a third-party CreateProcessElevated() function in the following article that can:

Vista UAC: The Definitive Guide

It also provides elevation versions of several other functions, including CreateProcessAsUserElevated() and ShellExecuteElevated().