How To Add “Run as Administrator” to Any File Type in Windows 7 and Vista

Hello lovely people 🙂

This installment of our computer repairs blog is on how to add ‘Run as Administrator’ to any file type.

In Windows 7 or Vista, have you ever tried to unzip a file to the programme files directory only to get an array of permission denied errors, and in general just to have been unsuccessful? So, the question is, when you are running in Administrator how do you open up a zipfile? For that matter – how do you open ANY file as an administrator?

Fortunately, there is a simple registry tweak we can do that will let us specify the action we can use to run as an administrator for a file type. While you have to make that change manually – we will talk you through it.

This is how you do it. Through the start menu search or run box open regedit and then browse down to the following key, substituting “.zip” for the file extension that you are looking for. (Note that the find dialog helps here)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.zip

Take note of the Data value for the “(Default)” item. This will tell you which application is registered to handle this file type, and also where we need to go in the registry next.

For this example, since the data field in this example says “WinRAR.ZIP” we’ll need to browse down to the following registry key. (Again, the find dialog helps here)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTWinRAR.ZIPshellopencommand

What we need to do is copy the shellopencommand section to shellrunascommand. The easiest ways is to right-click on *command* and then choose Export.

Open up the exported registry file in Notepad and change “open” to “runas” as indicated below:

Double-click on the file to enter the information into the registry. Now you’ll see that the “runas” section is identical to the “open” section:

You can now open it as administrator by right clicking on a file

The example we have shown used WinRAR, but it should still work for almost any file type or application. You’ll just have to change where you look in the registry.

If you need another go at having this explained to you, call your local computer repairs guru and try him 🙂

Over and out

MobileGeekette