Run an app with admin privileges.

I’m gonna keep it short this time :) Here’s the scenario. Standard user needs to be able to run software with admin privileges. Software is just simply badly designed and it won’t run under the user profile. Modifying folder, registry or services permissions are not solving the problem. Using right-click and “Run as administrator” requires admin username and password … in other words, its not a solution at all.

So how to do it then? We will use “Windows Credential Manager” to store credentials for that certain application.

– create a local power user or admin account
– logon as user, then create shortcut to the application you want to run as an admin.
– go to shortcut properties, under the target add the following before the line:
   runas.exe /savecred /user:localusername “C:\Program Files\Application\Run.exe”
– you also may want to change the shortcut icon after that, back to the original one.

once that done, when you double click on the shortcut (still being logged in as user) it will bring up a Command Prompt window asking for password. Once you type the password in, credentials will be stored in “Windows Credential Manager” so the next time when user logs in, there will be no need to provide password for that application to run with admin privileges.