I have Sysinternals Process Explorer installed as the system's task manager (Win7 64). Since half of the metrics for anything started as service and processes started under other user accounts are either silently missing or shown wrong, I would like to run Process Explorer as administrator by default.
Selecting the appropriate item from the menu after failing to perform an action on a process or wondering why some metric is not at all plausible (e.g. no I/O happening when the disk is very obviously reading/writing gigabytes of data, such as during a system backup operation) certainly does "work", but is a recurring, major inconvenience.
The Run as Administrator checkbox in file properties works for tools that you launch by clicking on an icon or a launcher (such as e.g. Autoruns) although it triggers UAC in a sheer stupefying manner every time.
I understand this is a "Feature" of the super smart Windows security system that cannot be avoided other than by turning off UAC completely, which frankly is the second most stupid design decision I've seen in my life.
The bigger problem I'm facing, however, is that enabling said checkbox for Process Explorer will disable the task manager. Ctrl-shift-ESC shows a busy cursor for a fraction of a second and doesn't seem to do anything else. Selecting "Task Manager" from the context menu on the task bar shows an alert stating that higher privilegues are needed to complete this operation (duh, that's exactly what the user is asking for!). The secure attention sequence brings up the lock screen. Clicking on "Task Manager" there does nothing.
Unchecking the checkbox makes Process Explorer work seamlessly again, but it (unsurprisingly) runs as normal user.
Apparently, the Windows guys are concerned that some malware that has already completely subverted the system to a point where it can bypass the secure attention sequence might be able to launch a program as administrator. Good grief.
Is there a workaround to both have Process Explorer come up when hitting Ctrl-shift-ESC (or the attention sequence) and running as administrator?
Best Answer
RUN IT AUTOMATICALLY ON WINDOWS BOOT
Starting anything with administrator privileges on Windows boot is fairly easy, you have just to schedule a task. Here is how it is done for Process Explorer in Windows 8.1. Works in Windows 10 too.
Press Win+S to open search charm, type in sched in the search field and choose a Schedule tasks option.
Task Scheduler window will open, click the Create Task... from the right actions panel.
On the tab General enter any name you like, and check the Run with highest privileges box in the bottom, just like this:
Go to the tab Triggers, push New... button, and set Begin the task to At log on, press OK:
On the tab Actions push New... button and set Action to Start a program; in the Program/script specify a path to the Process Explorer executable and finally in the Add arguments (optional) type in /t (this one will get Process Explorer started minimized to tray):
Basically you're done here, press OK in the main Create Task window. The Process Explorer will start minimized with highest privileges once you log on. You can adjust rest of the settings to your preference, for example make this task run when computer is run on battery (useful for laptops).
RUN IT MANUALLY ON DEMAND
If it is needed to run the task on demand, you'll need to set it begin At task creation/modification at step 4. Also on the Settings tab, check the Allow task to be run on demand. The rest options should be the same.
Then create a shortcut on Windows desktop, set its Target:
(Note that the task name should be exactly the same as you set it during the task creation).
If you would like, you can set a Shortcut key in the corresponding field. Screenshot for a reference:
That's it, now you can double-click this shortcut or use a shortcut key you set to start any task with administrator privileges and even the annoying UAC will not interfere.
For the hint, thanks to the author of this answer.