How can I tell whether a process is running with administrator permissions?

Question

I'm using Windows Vista, with UAC enabled. I've installed an application, and the installer required admin privileges. The installer then started the application. I'd like to know if the application is continuing to run with admin privileges.

I've tried Windows Task Manager and Process Explorer, and neither appear to show this information.

Answer 1

In Process Explorer, double click the process to open its properties. Go to the Security tab. In the group listing, find BUILTIN\Administrators and look at what it says in the Flags column.

Deny = Not Elevated (not admin)

Owner = Elevated (is admin)

Answer 2

In Process Explorer you can change the columns displayed and add the "Integrity level" column:

This is apparently the technical term for what is changed when you run a process with administrator privileges. If you run Process Explorer as an Administrator it will show ordinary processes as 'medium' integrity level and elevated processes as 'high'.

Note that if you run process explorer as an ordinary user, it will show processes that have admin privileges with a blank entry in the integrity level column.