Forum Discussion
Cannot run anything as administrator
Everything is working fine with WIndows 11 (latest beta build as of today) except I cannot execute the cmd command as administrator or run any program as administrator. WHen clicking on the CMD app as administrator nothing happens. I have run scannow and dsim and everything looks good. I can enter Windows Terminal (Admin) using the WIndows X approach. Any attempt to run any program by right clicking and selecting run as administrator fails. I tried a new admin user. No joy. I don;t know if this is significant but when I open the CMD app, the folder icon for run as administrator has a shield image in the lower right hand corner. Any troubleshooting ideas?
23 Replies
Uninstalling NCH Express Zip is still the correct answer in 2025.
- Install the latest Windows 11 update and check what happens.
- 1/ no update to install 2/ how do I check? I saw a post online that said updates reported installed but weren't but with no indication how they know they weren't. y'all gotta give more details instead of being so cryptic.
Well, I was perplexed by this problem, but I have discovered that the latest release of Windows 11 (22H2) seems to have a problem not just with "Run As Administrator" but most things on context menus (menus which appear when you click the right-,mouse-button). I tried your "fix" with NCH applications running (uninstalled them) but that did not help.
What eventually fixed the problem of not just "Administrator" but also all other problems with the context menus was following instructions in this excellent article:
https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/windows-11-classic-context-menusIt involves editing a key in the registry (so be careful).
Everything works fine now!
Hopefully, Microsoft will issue an update to remove the need for returning to the old style
(full as opposed to compacted) context menus. Personally I prefer the full menu anyway!Bro I asked multiple AI's and looked around for ages to fix this, almost till a point of giving up and reinstalling my pc which would have been a nightmare. I once installed this NCH software 2years ago on this pc and boooy I would never have found this issue without you! Thank you sooo much!!
ChrisRaisin I am smart enough to know that I'm too dumb to do regedits. I have a clean load from Dell that I started using Friday the 24th and there are no NCH products listed in the Uninstall Programs in Control Panel. Where else should I look for them? I can't install apps from DVD or download troubleshooters that MS recommends on their site. I also can't run scannow from a command window. It tells me I have to run on a console window as administrator. The
"right click and select run as administrator" solution doesn't work. There was one other solution that has you go in and unclick some recommendation or other, but MS has now removed that option so I can't do that either. I found this as well which suggests that I'll never get future upgrade MS sends me. so this is a serious problem and needs a resolution.https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/im-unable-to-install-new-updates-on-windows-11/6bf72642-fd49-41b4-8058-5d28b3b03ccb
- I am not smart enough to play with regedit. if you have another solution please let us all know because some of us are listed as administrator on our personal laptops and we are still hurting.
- I have the same issue, I rolled back to Windows 10 then back to Windows 11 hoping this would correct the issue, however it does not. I also tried and check my admin level and that is order. Hope this issue gets solved by WINDOWS 11 team soon.
- See my response posted today to solve your problem (and this problem for thousands of others I assume).
- Solved. After reading countless posts and trying every remedy I did run across an article that suggested certain programs could cause problems if they used menu context extensions. NCH products were mentioned. I removed the program Express Zip from my PC and I could once again use run as administrator in all its forms. I had Express Zip installed under Windows 10 and it was never a problem. However, once I upgraded to 11 it became one.
So glad to have come across this old post. I have been tearing out my hair for days because I couldn't run any app as administrator. I had tried every other solution mentioned online and none of them worked. Than I saw your post, uninstalled NCH Express ZIp - and all is well with the world again. Thank you!
