30

I have the following problem on my Windows 7 computer: I am a member of Administrators, but do not have full Superuser privileges. I have been told that this is by design, and that I need to explicitly "run as administrator" programs where I need Superuser privileges.

How do I do this with control panel?

5
  • 2
    You don't. What are you trying to achieve by doing so? Oct 21, 2013 at 19:11
  • Why not just run the specific programs that you need admin right as an administrator? See this screenshot of what I mean - Screenshot
    – Nick
    Oct 21, 2013 at 19:14
  • My problem is that despite being member of the local administrators group there are still settings I cannot change. For example I can't change in "Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\System Settings" the settings for what happens when I press the power button, close the lid etc... My first question about this problem got marked as a duplicate with the suggestion to ask a new question. Oct 22, 2013 at 5:49
  • @KristvanBesien out of security reasons you should use as a default account a standard user account and not a administrator account.
    – Devid
    Aug 23, 2014 at 21:19
  • If you are a member of an organization, you might not be able to change the setting at all.
    – Qwerty
    Aug 19, 2015 at 9:29

8 Answers 8

18

Before you go and do these steps, realize that running Control Panel as administrator accomplishes nothing if you're already in the administrators group. If you're an admin, any changes made in Control Panel run as administrator by default, so running the whole control.exe application as admin is redundant.

There are possible use cases for doing this if you're not an admin, however.


You should be able to run the Control Panel as administrator by doing the following:

  1. Create a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\control.exe.

    enter image description here

  2. Right click the shortcut you made and click Properties, then click the Advanced button.

    enter image description here

  3. Check the box for Run As Administrator.

Opening the shortcut will run the application elevated:

enter image description here


You can also do this from the command line as QMechanic73 pointed out in his answer.

2
  • 2
    Actually, you can be an administrator and yet have your normal invocations of control.exe not be as an administrator. So, there is a point to this.
    – iheanyi
    Feb 2, 2016 at 17:03
  • There is a use case for running control panel as admin: some applets (e.g. Windows Update) do not work (as in do not work at all as opposed to request admin permissions to proceed) if you're Guest. Mar 4, 2017 at 22:46
12

Control.exe only launches an Explorer instance and the Explorer can't be run as admin by default. The Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory ignores the "Run as Admin" command.

In 2010 I discovered a way to disable the Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory

You need to remove/rename the value RunAs in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\{CDCBCFCA-3CDC-436f-A4E2-0E02075250C2}and now the Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory is disabled and selecting Run as admin for control.exe starts the Control Panel as admin.

5
  • Registry Editor on Windows 10 errors when attempting to rename or delete this key.
    – G-Wiz
    Sep 23, 2020 at 0:40
  • 2
    @G-Wiz take ownership of the registry key first Sep 23, 2020 at 14:39
  • @magicandre1981 unable to change key permissions Sep 29, 2023 at 22:51
  • 1
    @HenriqueBrisola see the comment above, take ownership of the reg key first and give yourself full permissions Sep 30, 2023 at 16:09
  • I didn't take ownership before giving myselft full permissions, my bad Oct 1, 2023 at 20:35
5

You can use runas(Run As). Example runas /user:Machinename\Administrator "Control.exe".

Or right-click and select Run-As and select the user you want to use.

1
  • 1
    This runs the program as the user named Administrator, which has a different effect than what is asked about. The user is part of an Administrators group. So doing this is likely to have very little impact. Using "Runas" with the username of Administrator is related to which user account is being used. The question asker seems to be trying to have the effect of "Run As Administrator", which is related to UAC and is actually entirely unrelated to which user account is being used. So, "Run As Administrator" is unrelated to "Run As" mixed with Administrator.
    – TOOGAM
    Mar 10, 2017 at 10:40
3
  1. Click the Start Button

  2. Type "Control Panel" in the search box

  3. Right click the top item, and click "Run as Administrator"

enter image description here

1
  • 1
    no, this won't work, as I already explained. Jun 15, 2015 at 17:42
0

I know it deviates from the heart of your question, but I came here looking for an answer to a similar issue, and thought I'd post my solution here.

I've had an easier time redownloading the installer and running it as an administrator to be able to uninstall. I now save my installers so that I can uninstall if needed.

My company's IT allows me to install by using Run As Administrator, but then I can't uninstall afterwards using the control panel because it requires an admin login. My account isn't an admin account, just some weird flavor of superuser with proxy admin rights. I've tried both the windows 10 apps and also the older programs and features, but both end up requiring admin account login to uninstall.

0

server 2019 has some bugs that makes you have to run control panel as administrator.

To do so, just create a shortcut to c:\windows\System32\control

Then you can click on that shortcut and run as administrator.

-1

Right click on "Computer" on the desktop or in Windows Explorer and select "Manage".  Or go to "Start" → "All Programs" → "Accessories" → "System Tools", right click on "Computer", and select "Manage".

This is for Admin only. When prompted enter the admin password.

1
-2

You can also do rightclick on the icon and choose run as Administratrator / Then click yes. Now just uninstall any thing you want.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .