PowerShell run script as administrator

Right-Click to elevate

There are situation where it is desirable or even required to run a script in an elevated PowerShell session. While it is rather easy to right-click the PowerShell launching link and select Run as Administrator there is a better way to handle this.

Am I elevated?

First of all we can easily find out if current PowerShell session is elevated with the following command:

# Check if session is elevated
(New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)

# Session is not elevated
False

Arguably the above command will true when run within an elevated session or, like this case, false for a non elevated one. We can easily assign the return value to a boolean variable for use like this:

[bool]$isElevated = (New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)

if ($isElevated)
{
  Write-Host 'Session is elevated!'
}
else
{
  Write-Warning 'Session is not elevated!'
}

Self Elevating PowerShell Session

Armed with our newly acquired knowledge we can now create a self elevating PowerShell script which will elevate the session automatically if it now

# Check if session is elevated
[bool]$isElevated = (New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)

if ($isElevated)
{
	Write-Host 'Session is elevated - We can Continue'
}
else
{
	# Start a new elevated PowerShell session
	Start-Process -FilePath PowerShell.exe -Verb Runas
}

Of course you can even specify a variable holding your commands and use it in conjunction with the -ArgumentList parameter to specify which command should be run.

Elevate PowerShell session as another user

While not as common as the previous scenario it happened to me requiring to launch an elevated session as another user this can be done via the following command

Start-Process powershell.exe -Credential "Domain\User1" -ArgumentList "Start-Process powershell_ise.exe -Verb RunAs"

The above will launch an elevated ISE session under the authentication context of User1 which can be handy for example to run scripts under the context of that user without having to log off and again with the correct credentials.