There are so many reasons why we must run a program with administrator level or elevated access. For example, if you want to make changes to system settings then you must run a program with elevated access. Recently when Microsoft released mitigation instruction for the new “Follina” zero-day vulnerability in all the versions of Windows, they also gave instructions to run the command prompt (cmd.exe) with elevated access. Similarly, some of the screenshot applications fail to capture screenshots unless they are run with administrator level access.
Here is how you can set any program to be run as an administrator on Windows 11:
- Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New and then Shortcut.
- In the new shortcut creation wizard, we have to select the target program EXE, then give a shortcut name and the description.
- Right-click on the newly created shortcut and select Properties from the context-menu.
- In the program shortcut properties window, select the Compatibility tab.
- Select the checkbox labeled Run this program as an administrator.
- Click on the OK button to save the settings. Now whenever you use this shortcut to launch that program, it will be launched with administrator privileges.
When you launch the programs using such shortcuts, you are going to see the usual confirmation dialogs for providing administrator privileges to them. If you are using your Windows PC using a standard user account then you may have to provide administrator account credentials before that program is elevated.
At anytime in future, if you do not want to launch the programs with elevated access, then you can either modify the shortcut properties and uncheck the box labeled “Run this program as an administrator” or you can simply delete that shortcut and create a new shortcut for that program all over again. Both methods are going to make that program run with standard user permissions.