How do you run a command as an administrator from the Windows command line?
All you have to do is use the runas
command to run your program as Administrator (with a caveat).
runas /user:Administrator "cmdName parameters"
In my case, this was
runas /user:Administrator "cmd.exe /C %CD%\installer.cmd %CD%"
Note that you must use Quotation marks, else the runas command will gobble up the switch option to cmd.
Also note that the administrative shell (cmd.exe) starts up in the C:\Windows\System32 folder. This isn't what I wanted, but it was easy enough to pass in the current path to my installer, and to reference it using an absolute path.
Caveat: Enable the admin account
Using runas this way requires the administrative account to be enabled, which is not the default on Windows 7 or Vista. However, here is a great tutorial on how to enable it, in three different ways:
I myself enabled it by opening Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy, then navigating to Local Policies\Security Options and changing the value of the Accounts: Administrative Account Status policy to Enabled, which is none of the three ways shown in the link.
An even easier way to accomplish this:
C:> net user Administrator /active:yes
Press the start button. In the search box type "cmd", then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter