Windows – How to “Edit with Vim” as administrator in Windows

gvimvimwindowswindows 7windows 8

When you install gvim in Windows, you get a right-click Explorer context menu item: "Edit with Vim". Is there a way of either adding a "Edit with Vim as Administrator", or just changing the existing shortcut to always open the file with Vim in Administrator mode? I tried setting gvim.exe to always run as administrator, but that seems to break the context menu item; it gives the error "Error creating process: Check if gvim is in your path!"

UPDATE: magicandre1981 showed me a nice way of using nircmd to partially achieve what I want. Once I installed nircmd.exe to the windows system32 directory, adding this to the registry (putting it in a .reg file and running it) added a context menu item that let me edit files as admin:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Edit with Vim as Administrator]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Edit with Vim as Administrator\command]
@="nircmd.exe elevate \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Vim\\vim74\\gvim.exe\" \"%1\""

It's still not quite as nicely integrated as I'd like though, as it doesn't use the Vim helper DLL and requires the use of the additional nircmd tool.

Best Answer

I use the tool nircmd which has an option elevate to run programs as admin.

Here is an option to open Visual Studio projects (sln files) as admin:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.Launcher.sln\Shell\Open Solution elevated]
"HasLUAShield"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.Launcher.sln\Shell\Open Solution elevated\Command]
@="\"C:\\Windows\\nircmd.exe\" elevate \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\MSEnv\\VSLauncher.exe\" \"%1\""

I have no idea how gvim adds itself to the rightclick, so modify the entries. The HasLUAShield entry adds the UAC shield to the entry to make it easier to see that this run a task as admin.

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