title: What precisely does 'Run as administrator' do?
body: <p>On Windows&nbsp;7, I have a command-line program that fails due to file write permission errors, and popping up annoying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control" rel="noreferrer">UAC</a> dialogs every time I run command-line programs that are from an 'unknown publisher'.</p>
  
  <p>However, if I start my console by right clicking and choosing 'run as administrator', then the install works fine, even if the UAC dialogs are still present.</p>
  
  <p>My user is already a member of the 'administrators' group, so what precisely does 'run as administrator' do that makes my install work?</p>
  
  <p>My specific question is precisely: What does 'run as administrator' do? Neither of the answers thus far address this. (for example, does it run the new process as the 'Administrator' user? Or does it run the process as the current user, but with elevated privileges? If so, what privileges? How does that differ from the privileges I get from my user being in the 'Administrators' group?</p>
  
  <p>(Specifically, I'm using the 'Console' from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge" rel="noreferrer">SourceForge</a>, not a regular CMD window, but I don't think that's important. This is all while installing the Python 'distribute' package by running 'python distribute_setup.py' on a newly installed Python3 MSI from python.org. It's a 32-bit Python on 64-bit Windows. See <em><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8951862">Installing Python and distribute on Windows 7 gives &quot;Writing failed ... permission denied&quot;</a></em>)</p>