PowerShell: Running a command as Administrator

Question

You know how if you're the administrative user of a system and you can just right click say, a batch script and run it as Administrator without entering the administrator password?

I'm wondering how to do this with a PowerShell script. I do not want to have to enter my password; I just want to mimic the right-click Run As Administrator method.

Everything I read so far requires you to supply the administrator password.

Answer 1

If the current console is not elevated and the operation you're trying to do requires elevated privileges then you can start powershell with the "Run as administrator" option

PS> Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs

Answer 2

Benjamin Armstrong posted an excellent article about self-elevating PowerShell scripts. There a few minor issue with his code; a modified version based on fixes suggested in the comment is below.

Basically it gets the identity associated with the current process, checks whether it is an administrator, and if it isn't, creates a new PowerShell process with administrator privileges and terminates the old process.

# Get the ID and security principal of the current user account
$myWindowsID = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent();
$myWindowsPrincipal = New-Object System.Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal($myWindowsID);

# Get the security principal for the administrator role
$adminRole = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator;

# Check to see if we are currently running as an administrator
if ($myWindowsPrincipal.IsInRole($adminRole))
{
    # We are running as an administrator, so change the title and background colour to indicate this
    $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = $myInvocation.MyCommand.Definition + "(Elevated)";
    $Host.UI.RawUI.BackgroundColor = "DarkBlue";
    Clear-Host;
}
else {
    # We are not running as an administrator, so relaunch as administrator

    # Create a new process object that starts PowerShell
    $newProcess = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo "PowerShell";

    # Specify the current script path and name as a parameter with added scope and support for scripts with spaces in it's path
    $newProcess.Arguments = "& '" + $script:MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path + "'"

    # Indicate that the process should be elevated
    $newProcess.Verb = "runas";

    # Start the new process
    [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($newProcess);

    # Exit from the current, unelevated, process
    Exit;
}

# Run your code that needs to be elevated here...

Write-Host -NoNewLine "Press any key to continue...";
$null = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown");

Answer 3

This behavior is by design. There are multiple layers of security since Microsoft really didn't want .ps1 files to be the latest email virus. Some people find this to be counter to the very notion of task automation, which is fair. The Vista+ security model is to "de-automate" things, thus making the user okay them.

However, I suspect if you launch powershell itself as elevated, it should be able to run batch files without requesting the password again until you close powershell.

Answer 4

You can also force the application to open as administrator. If you have an administrator account of course.

Locate the file, right click > properties > Shortcut > Advanced and check Run as Administrator

Then Click OK.

Answer 5

Using

#Requires -RunAsAdministrator

has not been stated, yet. It seems to be there only since PowerShell 4.0.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh847765.aspx

When this switch parameter is added to your requires statement, it specifies that the Windows PowerShell session in which you are running the script must be started with elevated user rights (Run as Administrator).

To me, this seems like a good way to go about this, but I'm not sure of the field experience, yet. PowerShell 3.0 runtimes probably ignore this, or even worse, give an error.

When the script is run as a non-administrator, the following error is given:

The script 'StackOverflow.ps1' cannot be run because it contains a "#requires" statement for running as Administrator. The current Windows PowerShell session is not running as Administrator. Start Windows PowerShell by using the Run as Administrator option, and then try running the script again.

+ CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (StackOverflow.ps1:String) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ScriptRequiresElevation

Answer 6

To append the output of the command to a text filename which includes the current date you can do something like this:

$winupdfile = 'Windows-Update-' + $(get-date -f MM-dd-yyyy) + '.txt'
if (!([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal][Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole] "Administrator")) { Start-Process powershell.exe "-NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command `"Get-WUInstall -AcceptAll | Out-File $env:USERPROFILE\$winupdfile -Append`"" -Verb RunAs; exit } else { Start-Process powershell.exe "-NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command `"Get-WUInstall -AcceptAll | Out-File $env:USERPROFILE\$winupdfile -Append`""; exit }