There’s a simple registry tweak that will let us specify the action to run as administrator for a file type. Unfortunately you’ll have to make the tweak manually, but we’ll walk you through it.

Manual Registry Tweak

Open regedit through the start menu search or run box and then browse down to the following key, substituting “.zip” for the file extension that you are looking for. (Note that the find dialog helps here)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.zip

Now you want to take note of the Data value for the “(Default)” item. This tells you which application is registered to handle this file type, and also where we need to go in the registry next.

For this example, since the data field in this example says “WinRAR.ZIP” we’ll need to browse down to the following registry key. (again, the find dialog helps here)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WinRAR.ZIP\shell\open\command

What we want to do is copy the shell\open\command section to shell\runas\command. The easiest way to do that is right-click on “command” and then choose Export.

Now open up the exported registry file in Notepad and change “open” to “runas” where indicated below:

Double-click on the file to enter the information into the registry. Now you’ll see that the “runas” section is identical to the “open” section:

And now you can right-click on a file and open it as administrator:

This example used WinRAR, but this should work for almost any filetype or application. You’ll just have to change where you look in the registry.

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There are three solutions to this problem:

• Completely Disable UAC – Not the best solution for security purposes, but it works.
• Compile your script to an executable.
• Hack the registry and add “Run as Administrator” to the context menu.

Compile Script as Executable

All you have to do is right-click on the script, choose “Compile Script”…

And now you can run the executable version as administrator:

This isn’t the perfect solution, however. I edit my script all the time, so having to recompile each time I make an edit… would get annoying.

Manual Registry Hack for AutoHotkey “Run as Administrator”

Open up regedit through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AutoHotkeyScript\Shell

Right-click on “Shell” on the left-hand side and create a new key called “runas”, then create a key called “Command” below it. Then create or set the following two values on the right-hand side, adjusting the path if necessary.

The default key should already be there, just need to set the value.

Now when you right-click on an AutoHotkey script, you’ll see the option to Run as Administrator:

Download Registry Hack

Download, extract, and double-click on the AdminAutoHotkey.reg to enter the information into the registry. There’s also a removal script included.

Note that this registry hack will only work if you installed AutoHotkey into the default location, otherwise you’ll have to modify the paths.

Download AdminAutoHotkey Registry Hack

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