Month: March 2023

Windows 11. Opening Explorer.exe as administrator

For this hack I used the tool AdvancedRun offered by NirSoft  and combining the explanation given about “Run explorer.exe as Administrator user within Windows 7” and “How to run Command Prompt as Trusted Installer on Windows 11“

Using the tool AdvancedRun I opened a command prompt as Trusted Installer.  Once there and from there

  1. I opened “Registry Setting” with regedit.exe
  2. Navigate to the registry key:  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID{CDCBCFCA-3CDC-436f-A4E2-0E02075250C2}
  3. Right click on the registry key and click Permissions…
  4. Give Full Control permissions to the user logged in.
  5. Close “Registry Settings” and …
  6. From command prompt again now, open dcomcnfg.exe
  7. Expand DCOM Config
  8. Right click and select properties of “Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory“, click the Identity tab and select “The launching user“.
  9. Close dcomcnfg.exe and close also the command prompt we’re using

After this, you can for example open a new command prompt as administrator and execute “explorer.exe” or go to a current “File Explorer” C:\Windows and “Run as Administrator”

Opening explorer as admin from "File Explorer"
Explorer as Admin

Enjoy your new power!