How to Open an Elevated Command Prompt in Windows 11, 10, or 8
If you’re using a keyboard with Windows 11, Windows 10, or Windows 8, you can open an elevated Command Prompt quickly from the Power User Menu. Just use the WIN+X keyboard shortcut and then select Terminal (Admin) (in Windows 11) or Command Prompt (Admin) (in Windows 10/8). Choose Yes on any User Account Control messages that might appear. Feel free to close Task Manager. It does not need to remain open to use Command Prompt. …but don’t do anything else just yet!
How to Open an Elevated Command Prompt in Windows 7 or Vista
An elevated Command Prompt window should appear, allowing access to commands that require administrative level privileges.
When Do You Need an Elevated Command Prompt?
Some commands available in Windows require that you run them from an elevated Command Prompt. Basically, this means running the Command Prompt program (cmd.exe) with administrator-level privileges. You’ll know if you need to run a particular command from within an elevated Command Prompt because it’ll clearly tell you that in an error message after running the command. For example, when you try to execute the sfc command from a normal Command Prompt window, you’ll get the “You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sfc utility” message. Try the chkdsk command and you’ll get an “Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or the disk may be locked by another process. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode and make sure the disk is unlocked” error. Other commands give other messages, but regardless of how the message is phrased, or what Command Prompt command we’re talking about, the solution is simple: open an elevated Command Prompt and execute the command again.
More About Elevated Command Prompts
Don’t let all the discussion above convince you that you should, or need to, run Command Prompt as an administrator for most commands. For almost all Command Prompt commands, no matter what version of Windows, it’s perfectly okay to execute them from a standard Command Prompt window. To be able to open an elevated Command Prompt window, either a) your Windows user account must already have administrator privileges, or b) you must know the password to another account on the computer that has administrator privileges. Most home computer user’s accounts are set up as administrator accounts, so this isn’t usually a concern.
How to Tell if You Have Administrator Privileges
There’s a very easy way to tell if the Command Prompt window you’ve opened is elevated or not: it’s elevated if the window title says Administrator; it’s not elevated if the window title just says Command Prompt. An elevated Command Prompt window opens to the system32 folder. A non-elevated Command Prompt window instead opens to the user’s folder: C:\Users[username]. If you plan on frequently using an elevated Command Prompt then you should consider creating a new shortcut to Command Prompt that automatically starts the program with administrator-level access. See How to Create an Elevated Command Prompt Shortcut if you need help. In Windows XP, users have Administrator privileges by default. When you open a Command Prompt in XP it will be elevated unless you have another type of profile.
