The Windows 7 shell (Explorer) can be made to run with Administrator privileges by this manual process:
- Kill Explorer shell by holding down Shift+Ctrl, right-clicking the Shut down button in the Start Menu, and selecting Exit Explorer
- Start Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+Esc
- Elevate Task Manager privileges by going to Processes tab and selecting Show processes from all users
- Then start up a new instance of the shell by File | Run in Task Manager, typing in
explorer
, and selecting theCreate this task with administrative privileges
.
After following the above process, the Windows shell will be running with administrative privileges, and any programs it launches will also have administrative privileges. This makes performing tasks that require the privilege far easier, particularly for command-line applications, which usually fail silently or with an Access denied.
message rather than giving an opportunity to use UAC to elevate the process's privileges.
What I'm interested in, though, is creating an account which uses a privileged shell by default, rather than having to follow this laborious process every time. How can it be done?
Administrators
have access to. You're an administrator, but not really because UAC is enabled. Normally you would simply elevate a 2nd copy of Windows Explorer, so you can then browse into that folder. Unfortunately you cannot run a 2nd copy ofexplorer.exe
elevated. So the only fix is to kill your existing copy of explorer and run a fresh copy elevated. The tedious required steps given in this question are the required steps. A better solution would be better.