In my articles, you often see instructions to open the command prompt as admin. In Windows 10 also, you will need to use it from time to time, so I would like to share with you the various ways to open an elevated command prompt. Let's explore them right now.

Before you start reading, I strongly recommend you to see my previous article, "Do you know all these ways to open an elevated command prompt in Windows?". It covers all the possible ways to open an elevated command prompt in previous versions of Windows. Many of the tricks from that article still work in Windows 10.

This way is very handy in Windows 10. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft has implemented the Power Users menu, which contains many useful items like Control Panel, Network Connections and so on. Windows 10 also comes with such a menu. It contains the Command Prompt (Admin) item which is exactly what we need.

To access this menu in Windows 10, press Win + X shortcut keys together on the keyboard.

Tip: You can customize the Win+X menu with our freeware tool called Win+X Menu Editor. Check it out.

Update: This option has been removed in Windows 10 Creators Update. See the following article to learn about this change in detail: Windows 10 build 14986 replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell everywhere. To restore the command prompt in the Win +  X menu, see this tutorial: Add Command Prompt back to Win+X Menu in Windows 10 Creators Update.

In Windows 10, you can use the search box inside the Start menu. Type cmd there and press CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER to launch the command prompt elevated. This also works on the Start screen.

Windows 10 Search Open Cmd

Launch an elevated command prompt instance from a non-elevated one

You can launch an elevated instance of the command prompt from a non-elevated one. You might wonder why you would need to do this. Let me show you with an example scenario.
Whenever you press the SHIFT key and hold it and then right click on a folder in Explorer, you get the usual "Open command window here" menu item.
Open Command Window Here
This is very handy, you just opened a command window at the path you wanted. Now what if you need an elevated command prompt at that path? Command Prompt does not provide any way to open an elevated command window at the same path.

Update: The context menu option has been removed in Windows 10 Creators Update. You can restore it as follows:

Add Command Prompt to Context Menu in Windows 10 Creators Update

To resolve this issue and improve usability, you can use a little application I coded called ELE. It is able to reopen an already opened command prompt as administrator and keeps the current path.

Usage of ELE:
Simply typing ele - opens a new console window as administrator in the current directory.
ele /x - opens a new console window in the current directory and closes the original console window. If ELE is started from a file manager, it just opens a new elevated console at the current path.
ele
Copy-paste ele.exe in any folder which is included in your system %PATH% environment variable, e.g. C:\Windows or C:\Windows\system32. That will make it accessible from any folder and you won't need to type the full path to ele.exe every time you want to elevate the command prompt.

That's it!

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