Running as administrator disables other instances

[josago97]

If you run an executable as administrator and later open another instance of the same executable, that new instance does not work, the inputs, the buttons do, but text, number or selector inputs do not work.

[MikeYeager]

@josago97 We are able to reproduce this, but we're stumped as to why it's occurring. For us, it only happens if we have an instance running "As Administrator", and then start one or more other instance normally. The normal instance(s) has the issue. Additional instances running "As Administrator" work fine. Once all "As Administrator" instances are shut down, all new normal instances work as expected. Any normal instances still open that had the issue, still do not work. This appears to be an issue with the WebView2 control as the native window still operates as expected. We cannot reproduce the issue with the full Edge web browser. Any help on this one is appreciated!

[markan-io]

It's an issue with User data folder being shared between elevated and non-elevated process. If you run both instances with different temporary files path, then it works fine. That said, creating new temp folder for each instance leaves behind a bunch of trash, and webview starts with a fresh profile on each run. Isn't ideal.

VSCode for example, won't allow to start non-elevated instance if an elevated on is already running.

[MikeYeager]

Adding some documentation notes for future reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/concepts/user-data-folder?tabs=win32

#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>

bool IsRunningAsAdmin()
{
    BOOL isElevated = FALSE;
    HANDLE hToken = NULL;

    if (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_QUERY, &hToken))
    {
        TOKEN_ELEVATION elevation;
        DWORD dwSize;

        if (GetTokenInformation(hToken, TokenElevation, &elevation, sizeof(elevation), &dwSize))
        {
            isElevated = elevation.TokenIsElevated;
        }

        CloseHandle(hToken);
    }

    return isElevated;
}

int main()
{
    if (IsRunningAsAdmin())
    {
        std::cout << "Running with elevated privileges (Administrator)." << std::endl;
    }
    else
    {
        std::cout << "Not running with elevated privileges." << std::endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

It is possible to detect running as an administrator and overriding the temp path based on that. For example, adding .admin to the folder name.