Jean-Pierre Paradis's Blog: A self elevating PowerShell script

The long and the short of it is that, as a general rule, I always leave UAC enabled on Windows and never run as Administrator by default.  But I do have scripts that need to run as administrator from time to time.

Rather than launching PowerShell “as Administrator” (which would result in me running other scripts as administrator – because it would be convenient) I have put together the following chunk of script :

# Get the ID and security principal of the current user account
$myWindowsID=[System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$myWindowsPrincipal=new-object System.Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal($myWindowsID)
 
# Get the security principal for the Administrator role
$adminRole=[System.Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator
 
# Check to see if we are currently running "as Administrator"
if ($myWindowsPrincipal.IsInRole($adminRole))
   {
   # We are running "as Administrator" - so change the title and background color to indicate this
   $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = $myInvocation.MyCommand.Definition + "(Elevated)"
   $Host.UI.RawUI.BackgroundColor = "DarkBlue"
   clear-host
   }
else
   {
   # We are not running "as Administrator" - so relaunch as administrator
   
   # Create a new process object that starts PowerShell
   $newProcess = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo "PowerShell";
   
   # Specify the current script path and name as a parameter
   $newProcess.Arguments = $myInvocation.MyCommand.Definition;
   
   # Indicate that the process should be elevated
   $newProcess.Verb = "runas";
   
   # Start the new process
   [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($newProcess);
   
   # Exit from the current, unelevated, process
   exit
   }
 
# Run your code that needs to be elevated here
Write-Host -NoNewLine "Press any key to continue..."
$null = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")

This means that when you run the script in question – a new window will be opened “as Administrator” (with an appropriate prompt).

Cheers,
Ben

Source : Virtual PC Guy's WebLog