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I have two Vista Ultimate 32-bit OSs installed on my PCs here (one desktop for about 3 years, the other a laptop for 1 year), and have been experiencing the following rather irritating problem for a while on both of the computers:

Right-clicking on any shortcut in Windows, be it in Windows Explorer, the desktop, or the Start Menu, and then selecting Run as Administrator has absolutely no effect. I am of course running on an administrator account, and the expected behaviour should be for a UAC prompt to appear to confirm the execution of the given program.

This is persistent behaviour which I have not since been able to eliminate, even temporarily, on either of the installations. It is worth nothing that the issue appeared only a number of months after setting up the OS, and is quite possibly due to a program I installed at some point on both machines, which has corrupted something (perhaps a registry entry) that prevents the Run as Administrator action. Unfortunately, since I've virtually mirrored the OS configuration and programs installed on both PCs, there is no real possibility I can determine which setup program caused the issue by cross-comparison.

I have described exactly the same problem here on the MSDN forums, which some feedback, but nothing close to a solution unfortunately. The only real recommendation I received in the end was to wipe and reinstall, which is not a feasible solution for me.

Any suggestions here, even long-shots, would be most appreciated here, as I am getting fairly desperate for a resolution.

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  • have you tried turning UAC off, then back on?
    – John Gietzen
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 20:10
  • @John Gietzen: Nope, haven't tried that yet. Sounds like a longshot, but I'll give it a go anyway. Thanks.
    – Noldorin
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 12:06

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Right click on the shortcut icon and select properties. Put a tick in the box for "Run as Administrator".

If you have the original Windows DVD you can open a command prompt as administrator (if you can still do that) and type SFC /scannow This will check your install for corrupt system files against the install DVD and repair anything that is damaged.

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  • Configuring the shortcuts to always 'run as administrator' would do the job, except I usually only want to run them in unelevated mode. Thanks for the tip about the scan for corrupt system files. Will reply with the results of that.
    – Noldorin
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 12:07
  • @MarkM: Just tried running the 'SFC' utility, and no luck resolving the problem. However, it did say that the search had found corrupt system files, and produced a rather large log. If you feel this would be of any relevance, I woudl be glad to upload it.
    – Noldorin
    Commented Sep 16, 2009 at 10:29
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I have had success by going to the actual .exe file (not the shortcut) and changing its properties to 'Run as Administrator'. For some items, this has produced a different result than changing the property on the shortcut.

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  • This is pretty much my current work-around. Well, in fact just right-clicking on the EXE (rather than shortcut) and selecting 'run as administrator' does the job. Not terribly convenient however.
    – Noldorin
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 12:08
  • After I have changed the properties on the .exe, then when I make a shortcut to that .exe, it runs properly (as administrator).
    – Stewbob
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 20:08
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Interestingly (and thankfully) this problem seems to have fixed itself after one of the recent Vista updates. On both computers I can now run any shortcut as administrator.

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