Even if your user account is a member of the Administrators group, there are certain cmd commands that require Administrator privileges to continue running. Thankfully, Windows 10 provide your some easy and quick ways to open cmd as administrator, saving you the trouble of entering the admin password each time. Let’s see how.
Table of Contents
Run Cmd Prompt as Administrator
1. Start Menu
You must already know how to open the command prompt through the start menu. It’s the simplest way and always works. The same menu also provides you the option to run cmd as administrator, with one extra click. Here’s how.
- Open the Start Menu and type cmd, you will see the ‘cmd’ program appearing in the search result
- Next, right-click on the ‘cmd’ and select run as administrator
- Alternatively, you can search for cmd and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
2. Task Scheduler
To launch, simply write Task Scheduler in the Start Menu and select the app.
From the Actions tab on the right, tap on Create Task.
Now you’ll get another dialog box for creating a task. Type in the name of the task, in our case “RunCmd”. You can also write a description if you want.
Enable “Run with Highest Privileges” from the bottom. We do this so that it could run with elevated admin permission.
Now tap on “Conditions” from the top menu and from the “Power” section, disable “Start the task only when the computer is on AC Power”. If you don’t disable this, when you use the shortcut, it wouldn’t open the command prompt until you plug in the charger.
Now, we’ll need to create an action. This defines what happens when the task starts. To do that, select “New” from the bottom and browser to the app’s location. Command Prompt in our case. You’ll find it in My Computer > Windows > System32 > Cmd. Then click OK. Now, you’ve successfully created a task. Note: You can also find the location by right-clicking on the Cmd icon in the start menu. Then choose “Open File Location”.
To check if the task you made works fine, from the left side-pannel, click on “Task Scheduler Library” and search for the task (RunCmd) in the middle section. Right-click and tap RUN. If you see a Cmd window, that means that you’ve successfully created the task.
Now let’s create a shortcut for this task (That was our aim remember?)
Right-click on the desktop, select “New” and then choose “Shortcut” from the context menu.
You’ll be prompted by another dialog box. Now type the command that’ll run the task we created with the Task Scheduler which was RunCmd which will look like
schtasks /run /tn "taskName"
schtasks /run /tn "RunCmd"
Simply copy the command, paste and click next.
Next, you assign a name to the shortcut. I’ve used CmdAdmin for clarity if anyone else uses the computer.
That’s it, we’re done. Double click on the shortcut and now you can open the Cmd prompt window with admin rights straight from your desktop.
Is that it?
Pretty much, but that was simple right? You can create more such shortcuts using the Task Scheduler and bypass the permission prompt (UAC). In case you want to change the current shortcut’s icon, you can easily do that from the “Shortcut Properties” section. It also lets you assign a “Hot Key”, so you don’t even have to double click on the shortcut icon. Hope you found this useful, if you’ve another way, do let me know!