# How do I permanently give myself Admin privileges in Win7? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 16, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537 "2013-02-16T21:23:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/1 "2013-02-16T21:23:17Z")
Sometimes i’ll have to install a program and I have to select ‘open as administrator’. Thats fine, but right now I have a game that is trying get an update but it returns a message that I have to have admin privledges to download the patch. It doesnt give me any options to open as admin. Its a message from the game, not Windows. It’s my computer, i’m the only user. How do I log on as admin? ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/2 "2013-02-16T21:24:36Z")
[Here](http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/windows-7-administrator-password.htm)’s a start. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/3 "2013-02-16T21:27:14Z")
The Windows 7 security model is “don’t trust the user”, so even administrators aren’t really administrators unless you specifically request that power for a specific program. This is a feature of User Account Control, or UAC. It’s probably easiest to [turn off UAC temporarily](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Turn-User-Account-Control-on-or-off). Note that this is a security risk, but not much more so than granting a random game administrative privileges. Just turn it back on afterward if you’d like. Otherwise, you can track down the game’s update manager in the task manager, close it, and re-open it as an administrator. Much more annoying that way. ETA: Running as the built-in Admin user may or may not work, depending on how multi-user-friendly the game is. Even if you update it on the admin account, you want to switch back to your regular user account to keep playing or you might lose your settings and saved games. ---
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/4 "2013-02-16T21:51:40Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > It’s probably easiest to [turn off UAC temporarily](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Turn-User-Account-Control-on-or-off). Note that this is a security risk, but not much more so than granting a random game administrative privileges. Just turn it back on afterward if you’d like. That worked. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/5 "2013-02-16T22:15:15Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > That worked. Thanks. Yep. If you turn it back on, you’ll be safer. If you leave it off, you’ll be saner. Decisions, decisions… ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/6 "2013-02-17T23:43:48Z")
In cases like that, it sometimes helps to start the program in admin mode - normally that’s just right-click, “Run as administrator” ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/7 "2013-02-18T00:16:46Z")
> [@Nanoda](#): > > In cases like that, it sometimes helps to start the program in admin mode - normally that’s just right-click, “Run as administrator” I think that’s what the OP already tried to do in the first post. But sometimes game updaters run in the background, or under a different executable name, so it’s not necessarily easy to find the right executable to give admin powers TO. Oftentimes what would happen is a game launcher would download a self-executing patcher and try to run it. But if Windows doesn’t correctly give the patcher admin rights (even if the user gave it to the _launcher_), the patcher would be unable to do its job. ---
**Author:** ![dstarfire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dstarfire/32/5762_2.png) [@dstarfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dstarfire)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/8 "2013-02-18T07:31:09Z")
Go to the control panel \> User Accounts \> change account type. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/9 "2013-02-18T15:32:34Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > I think that’s what the OP already tried to do in the first post. Seemed ambiguous - long experience tells me it’s best not to assume the customer has done the basic stuff. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/10 "2013-02-18T21:12:13Z")
If you can find the program/updater executable file, right-click on it and in the Properties you can set it to Run as Administrator. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-permanently-give-myself-admin-privileges-in-win7/650537/11 "2013-02-18T21:32:07Z")
> [@Nanoda](#): > > Seemed ambiguous - long experience tells me it’s best not to assume the customer has done the basic stuff. That’s what I thought - it seemed clear the OP knows about running as Administrator, but I didn’t notice anything to suggest that he/she has tried running the parent process as Admin (if indeed that’s practical).