The requested operation requires elevation in Windows Vista

Posted by andy gaskell on Dec 13th, 2006

So I’ve been using Vista for a few weeks now and for whatever crazy reason I decided I needed to flush dns. I received this message: “The requested operation requires elevation”. Okay, to get around this go to All Programs, Accessories, right click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator. Good to go!

run as administrator

Update:
I’ve been running Vista for quite some time now and finally got fed up with User Account Control (UAC). What UAC really turns into is security by nagging so I disabled it altogether. To disable UAC open the Control Panel/User Accounts then click Turn User Account Control on or off. Uncheck the box. Click OK.

turn off uac in the control panel

turn off user access control

67 Responses

  1. LJay Says:
    February 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Thanks that was brill, been looking everywhere for this its done my head in

  2. dan Says:
    May 10th, 2007 at 4:51 am

    BIG HELP! :) thanks

  3. Robert Says:
    May 31st, 2007 at 4:51 pm

    Excellent. Thanks, saved me a minimum of $20.

  4. Sud Says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    I have been having frustrated by UAC since I bought a new laptop with vista a week ago. And thanks to you, I am now back to the good old easy way of using windoze without UAC.

  5. JVT Says:
    June 8th, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    This was great help, its been a bitch using vista. Slowly, with forums like this, we escape its bitchiness.

    Thanks Again!!

  6. barbermr Says:
    July 4th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    I was trying to download my old programs to vista, and it kept giving me that message about “elevation”, so I tried disabling as you said… and I now am able to download all my old stuff back now. Thanks!

  7. Neo Says:
    July 5th, 2007 at 11:13 am

    Thanks for the tip. It solved so many frustrating hours on Vista!

  8. Jeff Says:
    July 16th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    Yup - really useful - I thought I was going mad when I saw this message, it was a new one on me. Many thanks for sharing the info.

  9. Faruk Says:
    July 21st, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    THANKS A MILLIONS!!!! IF ANYONE IS HAVING PROBS WITH ANY OTHER S/W, SIMPLY RIGHT-CLICK (USALLY THE .EXE FILE) AND AS ABOVE RUN AS ADMIN.

    CHEERS!!!!

  10. Dana Says:
    August 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am

    Thanks a lot for this. I work for Verizon DSL Tech Support and this has been a great reference to me when I had no idea what that meant.

  11. Jerry Says:
    August 6th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

    Many thanks for the info on “the requested operation requires elevation”. I’m new to Windows Vista, and especially appreciate your plain English instructions, as I don’t speak computerese. Saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

  12. Mike Bailey Says:
    August 10th, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    Thanks, your post was a big help! Flushdns is a necessity at times…

  13. Athena Says:
    August 23rd, 2007 at 1:17 am

    Thanks so much for the clear and easy answer. I’ve just hunted around several different websites and didn’t find a clear answer to this question. There was alot of complicated responses from people who work for Microsuxs, but this by far was the best on the net!

  14. Tom Haws Says:
    September 7th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    Well, I’m a Sys Admin who specifically ordered my new laptop with Vista so I can start testing the new Vista features. We use XP here right now, but Vista is inevitable, so I don’t want to turn off the UAC stuff

    But in order to keep doing my job without it driving me nuts, I’ve created a desktop shortcut to the cmd prompt. When I need to run with elevated privileges, I right-click that icon and select “Run as Administrator” from the menu there.

    Kind of a workaround, but it makes it a lot easier than navigating several menus deep to run it…

  15. roxxie Says:
    September 7th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Sorry to be dumb but when I go to accessories/click on command prompt and choose run as administrator, another window opens to a C prompt. What do I do then?? Please help

  16. Sandeep Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 2:30 am

    Hi ,

    thankyou very much for this info. I am an ISP Technician. very new to win Vista. Onetime i had to reset the Winsock, and when we were doing that, we got the error about elevation. I just googled and got your link which was very helpful. Thankyou.

  17. dar Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 5:21 am

    OMG Thank U for a easier and understandable way to do this.
    I couldn’t install Office 2003 nor unistall MSN Messenger because of the UAC.
    I had to toy w/ my Vista crap for quite a while before I found answer. At least you made it easy, unlike MSN blogs and a few others that make no sense to us normal non computer tech people.I know where to come to for when I have more problems or questions.li

  18. Aaron Johnson Says:
    September 16th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    Thank you so much!! YOU SAVED ME A BUNCH OF MONEY!! Thought I had to buy a program again!!

  19. Chito Says:
    September 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 am

    definitely this was a big help for a newbie on vista like me . . . it came first on google search

  20. Chris Says:
    September 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    FYI - I found this post on a MSDN forum site… thanks to this guy!

    Try to run the Command Prompt with elevated privileges before running the “route” command. Simply right-click the “Command Prompt” and choose to “Run as Administrator”. That will initiate the UAC prompt for elevated privileges. If you are a member of the local administrator-group you should simply have to select continue, otherwise you need to enter the administrative password.

    Regards

    Johan Lindfors
    Microsoft AB

  21. Escher Beatnik Says:
    October 22nd, 2007 at 3:05 am

    Fantastic Article!
    10 out of 10 and right on the money!

  22. Marc’s Musings » Blog Archive » co-incidence or Kwality? Says:
    October 24th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    [...] took exactly 3 days before I went in and disabled UAC (directions here). As a friend at work stated “UAC is great if you don’t know anything about computers [...]

  23. Blog.Lejer.Ro - Bloggers Heaven Says:
    November 2nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    The requested operation requires elevation in Windows Vista…

    THANKS GaSKELL.ORG!!!!
    So I’ve been using Vista for a few weeks now and for whatever crazy reason I decided I needed to flush dns. I received this message: “The requested operation requires elevation”. Okay, to get around this go to All Programs,…

  24. Victor Says:
    November 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    AMIN!!! Thanks!!! saved me to install win98 on my lap, lol :))

  25. harv Says:
    December 24th, 2007 at 5:22 pm

    tried everything. Still cannot access certain folders. Permission denied. Can’t share some foders. Vista is @#$%^

  26. adam Says:
    January 9th, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    Thanks a million!

  27. Juraj Says:
    January 16th, 2008 at 3:49 am

    Great, just what I was looking for!

    Thanks for enlightening us and saving a lot of frustration over UAC.

  28. Sas Says:
    January 16th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    Thanks for the tip! Awesome!

  29. Guy Barwood Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Um, just right click on the command promt icon & select properties.
    Click on Advanced button on the shortcut tab
    Enable “run as administrator”

    now run command prompt and you can flush the dns cache without opening up Vista’s security…

  30. SirSnugglesAlotz Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    You don’t know what you’re talking about - UAC RULEZ!!!!

    Also, you smell like month-old cabbage.

  31. Dave Millar Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 7:54 am

    You are the MAN !!!!

  32. Andrew Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Thanks for that! Was a huge help while trying to update my graphics card drivers!

  33. Ginger Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    Thanks so much - fixed it in no time. Saved me 3 hours worth of work

  34. Luis Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Awsome Thanks!

  35. Chelle Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Thanks - I really needed this tip!

  36. Roel Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am

    Nice one, thank you very much!

  37. Tim Says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    I know that I sound like all the other responders, but, thanks so much. This helped immensely.

  38. eric Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 12:43 am

    Thanks a bunch! I too had problems flushing the dns and googled “the requested operation requires elevation” and this was the first result! Yay for blogs. Yah for google!

  39. Nikki Says:
    March 17th, 2008 at 8:49 am

    i needed to do that to get my Messenger to work, but everytime i click on Command Prompt, a window with black background pops up
    i dont know how where i’m supposed to click “run”
    please help?

  40. Driva Says:
    March 18th, 2008 at 5:32 am

    Thanks for your information, it’s useful for me

  41. Loo Says:
    March 25th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Thanks for the help. Now another to deal with another wall.

  42. Keith Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    I love you. I was going nuts.

  43. JoeMama Says:
    March 31st, 2008 at 6:42 am

    Just curious if anyone knows WHY we have to do this - my account already is an Administrator account. “Administrator” is defined on the User Accounts - Change Your Account Type screen as “Administrators have complete access to the computer and can make any desired changes…” which seems to contradict the behavior.

  44. Michael Hanney Says:
    April 20th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    Great, thanks! Does anyone know if a shortcut to cmd.exe can be configured to always run as Administrator?

  45. rada119 Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    Does anyone know if a shortcut to cmd.exe can be configured to always run as Administrator? Just create a desktop shortcut for cmd.exe (from Accessories>Command Prompt>(right click)Send To>Desktop. Then right-click on the shortuct, select Properties>Shortcut>Advanced. Then tick/check the box Run As Administrator. Job done! Btw, thanks muchly for the tip on req op req elevation!!

  46. rada119 Says:
    April 27th, 2008 at 5:20 am

    Does anyone know if a shortcut to cmd.exe can be configured to always run as Administrator? Yes, first create a desktop shortcut to cmd.exe (from Accessories>Command Prompt (right-click)>Send to>Desktop).

    Right-click on this desktop shortcut then select Properties>Shortcut>Advanced. Click/tick the box next to Run As Administrator, then OK, OK. Now when you click on the shortcut it always opens cmd.exe as Administrator:Command Prompt and you won’t get any “requires elevation” frustration.

  47. zed Says:
    April 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Thanks for that

  48. zed Says:
    April 27th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Does anyone know if a shortcut to cmd.exe can be configured to always run as Administrator? Yes, right-click on shortcut, then select Properties>Shortcut>Advanced. Then click/tick the box next to Run As Administrator, then OK, OK. Now when you click on the cmd.exe shortcut it will run as Administrator:Command Prompt every time.

  49. Derek Says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Thank you very much! I was surprised to get a command prompt; I get nostalgic when I have to recall my DOS knowledge.

  50. Tony Says:
    July 1st, 2008 at 1:05 am

    Thanks! The “error message” was completely mystifying otherwise. Curious that an administrator user does not run as administrator.

  51. Jeff Says:
    July 13th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Thank you so much for the advice!!! It not only solved all of the issues I have been having with Vista, but also changed opinions all around about Vista!!!! If it wasn’t for this priceless information, we would have been installing XP again! Thanks again…..hats off to you:)

  52. Juan carlos Says:
    July 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    thanks bro, save the day

  53. ash Says:
    July 21st, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    THANK YOU

  54. spesol Says:
    July 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    Thanks, short answer & right into the point!

  55. Dan H Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Wow.. such an easy fix for six months of frustration.

    Aloha ~

  56. Nick Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    Thank you, now I can get back to my rosetta stone software.

  57. Ahmed Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    Great advice and very clearly explained. Thanks

  58. Todd Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Great help! Thanks.

  59. Peter Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 1:20 am

    Great Help. Thanks!

  60. Nikhil Says:
    September 21st, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    Hey Thanks Andy. It really helped a lot.

  61. Voeop1 Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

    Thanks!

  62. Emily Says:
    October 26th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    THANK YOU!

  63. awm050501 Says:
    October 28th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    I have UAC disabled & did the run as admin (and my account is admin also)and still getting the elevated error. Any ideas?

  64. andy gaskell Says:
    October 28th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    @awm050501 what application are you trying to run?

  65. Gunawan Says:
    December 10th, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Thanks… It’s helpfull… :)

  66. Northern Venom Says:
    January 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    Thanks man. It’s been my problem since I started using Vista. This version of Windows have a lot of problems.

  67. Northern Venom Says:
    January 3rd, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Can this also address the bluetooth problem I’m having? I’m using a WIDCOMM Bluetooth device.

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