I have a C# Service running as localSystem, and that service needs to access
a network share on another computer.  When attempting to access the share, my
service gets an "Access denied" error even though the security settings on
the share should allow access. (Everyone: Read)

If I run my service under the NetworkService account, access is granted.

According to the service account documentation, both the localSystem and the
NetworkService account "acts as the computer on the network", but obvioulsy
there are some differences.

I need the elevated privioleges of the localSystem account for my service,
how can I access the network share while running under this account?

Have you considered running the service under a domain user account that has
the required permissions on the local machine as well as adequate access to
the remote share?


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Yes, I have considered that, but I'd rather avoid having a domain account
with administrative rights on all systems in the domain.

I can add that I have access to the calling user security token as well as
the SYSTEM security token and I can impersonate the calling user in my
service. This way I can impersonate the user while doing the network access,
but unfortunately this isn't enough. I need local administrative rights while
doing the network access (as user). I found an API (CreateProcessWithLogonW)
that potentially could have solved my problem if it had been available on
Windows XP.

Can I in some way add the group SID for the local Administrators group to
the user security token I have? I don't want to put the user in that group,
just temporarily add that group SID to the user token in that process. That
way, I could access the network while impersonating the user and still have
administrative rights locally.


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