How to Run File Explorer Elevated (as Administrator) on Windows

File Explorer process always runs with minimal (non-elevated) privileges in Windows. Even if you click the C:\Windows\explorer.exe executable file and try to start it in the ‘Run as administrator’ mode, it will not elevate privileges. In this article, we will look at a simple trick to run File Explorer on Windows with elevated privileges (as administrator).

Running the File Explorer Process on Windows as an Administrator

To run the Windows Explorer process with elevated privileges, you will first need to kill the unprivileged explorer.exe process.

1. Open the Windows Task Manager (taskmgr.exe), go to the Details tab, find a kill the explorer.exe process (End task);
2. Then in Task Manager select -> File -> Run New Task -> run the command: explorer.exe /nouaccheck (make sure that the Create this task with administrative privileges option is enabled);
3. This will start the File Explorer process with administrator privileges. How can you be sure of this?
4. On the Details tab, right-click the title of the process list and choose Select Columns;
5. Check the Elevated option;
6. Now you can see that the explorer.exe process is running in privileged mode (Elevated=Yes).

You can also run the elevated explorer.exe process from the PowerShell console (be sure to run powershell.exe as an administrator):

1. Kill the running low-privileged explorer.exe process:taskkill /f /FI "USERNAME eq $env:UserName"/im explorer.exe
2. Run the privileged explorer.exe:
   c:\windows\explorer.exe /nouaccheck
3. The new explorer process will inherit the elevated access token that is used to run the powershell.exe console.

You can create the following BAT file on your desktop to quickly run File Explorer with administrator privileges:

taskkill /f /FI "USERNAME eq %USERNAME%" /im explorer.exe
start c:\windows\explorer.exe /nouaccheck

Fix: You Don’t Have Permission to Access Folder

Let’s have a look at a common scenario where an Explorer process with administrator privileges can be particularly useful

In some cases, you may need to open the system or other users’ profile folders or edit protected system files by using Explorer running as an account that has been added to the local Administrators group (or even under the built-in Windows administrator). If you try to open such a directory or file in the current Explorer context, a User Account Control (UAC) warning window will appear, asking you to grant access and elevate privileges.

For example, try using Explorer to open the system directory C:\Windows\System32\Config. The UAC prompt should appear, informing you that you are not allowed to access the directory:

You don’t currently have permission to access this folder.
Click Continue to permanently get access to this folder.

If your account has local administrator permissions, you can use UAC to elevate privileges by clicking Continue.

When you click Continue, UAC temporarily elevates the privileges of your explorer.exe process and grants your account Full Control NTFS permissions on the folder.

Known issues with this approach:

After performing such an operation, your account will be explicitly added to the NTFS folder permissions. Even though you only wanted to view the contents of the directory, not change its ACL! If this Windows Server host is managed by more than one administrator, then the folder ACL will be constantly increasing. This is because, when accessing the folder, any administrator will change the directory ACL.

This pop-up UAC notification becomes annoying if you are actively managing system files or shared folders. To avoid completely disabling UAC in Windows, you can temporarily run File Explorer as an administrator.

Be sure to restart explorer.exe in Normal mode when you have finished working with protected or user folders.

This trick of running the Windows Explorer process with elevated privileges works in Windows Server 2016/2019/2022 as well as in all builds of Windows 10/11.