How can I create a folder in Program Files with UAC on from the command line?

Question

Up until now, I've always disabled UAC. Now, I'd like to play by the book and leave it on.

My test case is getting mkdir c:\program files\foo to work. When I run it (my user is an admin), I get Access is denied.

So, do runas /user:boom\administrator "mkdir c:\program files\foo", hoping this will help. I am prompted for a password. I hit ENTER, and get

RUNAS ERROR: Unable to run - mkdir c:\program files\foo 1327: Logon failure: user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords not allowed, logon hour restrictions, or a policy restriction has been enforced.

Fine, I try to setup a password for the administrator user. I look it up in the users tab in task manager or in User Accounts --> Manage another account, and it's not there.

How should I proceed? Is trying to run mkdir under administrator is even the right track? Should I try to run it under SYSTEM?

As a side note, I also tried installing Sudo for Windows, but couldn't get it to work, nor could I find a simple "hello world" tutorial for it (This is the issue I ran into).

Update - OK, I found cmd.exe and right-clicked "run as Administartor", and was then able to change the password by running a privileged taskmgr from it. Still, when I run runas /user:administrator "mkdir foo" and type the password I get the same error. This is a brand new laptop, not connected to a domain, and the admin password is not blank.

Update 2 - This is Win 7 64 bit professional, and I want to do this all from the command line. My goal is to create a simple "sudo.bat" script.

Answer 1

If you logged in account is an "administrator" then you should be able to right-click cmd.exe, "Run AS Administrator", Hit "OK" to UAC, and from there the mkdir should work in Program Files without any further prompting.

If you are not a admin user, and/or open the cmd in the regular user context (not "As Administrator"), then you'll be denied access to Program Files (as you have found).

Are you sure the error you're getting (once you are successfully using a known Administrator account/ password) with RunAs is the SAME error ("1327: Logon failure: user account restriction") and not "2: The system cannot find the file specified."?

Because I get error 2 when I try to RunAs MkDir (as an admin) because Mkdir is NOT an executable file (it's a system command), and that's all RunAs can launch.

You can use CMD.EXE in combination with RunAs, and then feed it the mkdir command. This is tricky due to nested double quotes, but in the end you should be able to use:

runas /user:administrator "cmd /C \"mkdir \"c:\\program files\\foo\"\""

From any command prompt (administrator or not) to pull off what you want.

(The extra backslashes are escape characters)

Answer 2

The easiest way is to:

• open your Start menu

• type cmd in the search, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter

• Accept the UAC prompt (this effectively is the same as running su)

• type mkdir "c:\program files\foo"

Answer 3

Try using PsExec, from sysinternals. Command like:

psexec -i -d -s cmd.exe

would run command line with System Account privileges.

EDIT: In order for the above command to work, you would need Admin Rights on the target machine(s). Confirmed that it does work in a domain environment.

Example: If I had a list of machine names or IP addresses to the machines I wanted to create a directory called "temp1" on the C:\ drive, I would include the list of machine names/IP addresses in a file called " computers.txt ". Then, from that directory that the text file exists, I would execute the following from a command prompt.

psexec -i -d -s @computers.txt cmd /c "mkdir c:\temp1"

This will check each computer and then attempt to connect to the computer and then create the directory.

Answer 4

In my case i tried this solution and got the answer. As mentioned in link i got this answer.

copy NUL emptyfile.extension

Try to use this. I also solved the problem