Systems Engineering

Under Vista, an application can have a manifest that identifies the privilege level it needs to run. These manifests can serve other purposes, too: they’re also known as fusion manifests and can be used to identify dependencies among other things. Adding one to your application starts with adding a file to your project (right click and choose Add, New Item: depending on the language you’re using you might be able to choose XML file or else Text file will do.) Then you put appropriate XML in it, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">

  <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" 

       processorArchitecture="X86"

       name="Sample"

       type="win32" />

  <description>Sample Manifest Test Application</description>

  <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">

    <security>

      <requestedPrivileges>

        <!-- <requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" /> --> 

        <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" />

        <!-- <requestedExecutionLevel level="highestAvailable" /> -->

      </requestedPrivileges>

    </security>

  </trustInfo>

</assembly>

Links:

• A very detailed whitepaper that covers everything you could every want or need to know about UAC from a developer perspective New UAC Whitepaper Released
  
• Shawn has a post that discusses this method, Adding a UAC Manifest to Managed Code. He includes the manifest directly inline in the .rc file, rather than pointing to an external manifest file.
• Daniel also describes this method in his Vista: User Account Control post
• A walk through these steps on this Channel9 screen cast