Browser Helper Objects (BHO) in Windows Vista only with admin rights?

Question

For a university project I programmed a Internet Explorer Browser Helper Object to process web document information while browsing. It were running successful on Windows XP with IE6 and IE7.

Now I have the issue that under Windows Vista the same BHO needs administrator rights to run. Browser and BHO running if you start the IE as administrator but if you start as normal user it crashes.

The BHO is of course registered on the system and activated in the browser.

What can I do that a user with non-admin rights can run the registered and activated BHO? Or is maybe something else the reason and I totally miss it?

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 1

Not sure if your problem is related to custom actions in your installer but the following two links should help you.

• Building a BHO with the UAC in mind - http://simonguest.com/blogs/smguest/archive/2006/11/19/Building-Browser-Helper-Objects-using-Managed-Code.aspx (a little over half way down)

• Using the NoImpersonate script - http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/05/28/2958062.aspx

Answer 2

You should use a debugger to determine why the addon is crashing. Chances are good that you're attempting to write to a protected location, and when that fails, your code fails to check for an error result.

Using Process Monitor and watching for Access_Denied returns is often helpful, but using a full-debugger is the right way to go.