How to have both "Open window command here" and "Open window command here as admin" in Windows 10 Context menu?

Question

How to have both "Open window command here" and "Open window command here as admin" in the Explorer context menu?

Important notes/details:

without using Powershell as launcher of elevated cmd.exe because this creates a fast flickering Powershell window which I don't want ; and also without having to use submenus in the context menu.
without using the unique HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas subkey that is already used for another tool in my setup. Thus the methods from, e.g. Easiest way to get right-click "Open command window here" with admin priveleges in Windows 7 do not work.
The former is documented in 'Open command window here' does not appear in context menu but not the latter.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '25 at 09:06

"Open window command here" is hidden by default in Win10, so you can start regedit.exe as TrustedInstaller with the third party freeware tool AdvancedRun, and go in
```
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\background\shell\cmd
```
Rename HideBasedOnVelocityId to HideBasedOnVelocityId_Old and Extended to Extended_Old.
An alternative to doing this is to create a totally new key
```
Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\background\shell\cmd2
```
with Default = "Open cmd here"

and
```
Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\background\shell\cmd2\command
```
with Default = cmd.exe /s /k pushd "%V"

To have an elevated "Open window command here as admin", create

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\background\shell\cmd3

with Default = "Open cmd here as admin"

and

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\background\shell\cmd3\command

with Default = "C:\Python311\pythonw.exe" "C:\path\to\main.py" "%V"

and main.py being:

import os, sys, ctypes
path = sys.argv[1]
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", "cmd.exe", f'/s /k pushd "{path}"', None, 1)

(the elevate-launcher is here Python 3.11)

An alternative is using How do I change "Open with Powershell" to "Open with Command Prompt" when shift-rightclicking in Explorer? (see main answer), but this requires to have context menu submenus (to be able to use multiple specific runas shell registry subkey)

1 Answers1