FYI:
One thing that's long annoyed me about NT 6.0 and later is that one
cannot launch Windows Explorer (EXPLORER.EXE) as an elevated process.
This was easily done under XP, but in Vista/2008 and later, it doesn't
work. Microsoft says this is "by design".
Well, I just came across a workaround. It's a kludge, isn't official
or supported, and is prolly not a good idea for widespread deployment,
but on an admin or dev PC, it might be worth it. Your call. You pays
your money, you take your chances.
As an admin, open Registry Editor
Find the key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\{CDCBCFCA-3CDC-436f-A4E2-0E02075250C2}
Take ownership of the key (it's owned by TrustedInstaller by default)
Grant the admin account you're using permission to modify the key
Rename the entry “RunAs” to “RunAs.RENAMED” (or whatever)
This deliberately breaks the "Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory",
which seems to have the side-effect of letting another Explorer
instance run, elevated. You don't even have to exit your main
(unpriv'ed) Explorer process. You still need to keep “Launch folder
windows in a separate process” disabled.
I expects this breaks the regular "over-the-shoulder credentials" UAC
GUI elevation process, but we've got that disabled here anyway.
Tested on Win 7 Pro SP1.
Credit:
http://superuser.com/questions/55013/runas-windows-explorer-in-windows-7/594641#594641
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/144776-unable-to-open-an-elevated-windows-explorer-window/#entry928646
Posted by user "MagicAndre1981"
Share and enjoy!
-- Ben
