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?
58 Answers
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:
Create a shortcut to
C:\Windows\System32\control.exe.Right click the shortcut you made and click Properties, then click the Advanced button.
Check the box for Run As Administrator.
Opening the shortcut will run the application elevated:
You can also do this from the command line as QMechanic73 pointed out in his answer.
2Control.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.
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.
Click the Start Button
Type "Control Panel" in the search box
Right click the top item, and click "Run as Administrator"
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.
1I 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.
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.
You can also do rightclick on the icon and choose run as Administratrator / Then click yes. Now just uninstall any thing you want.
