How to create a Run As Administrator shortcut using Powershell

Question

In my PowerShell script, I create a shortcut to a .exe (using something similar to the answer from this question):

$WshShell = New-Object -comObject WScript.Shell
$Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut("$Home\Desktop\ColorPix.lnk")
$Shortcut.TargetPath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\ColorPix\ColorPix.exe"
$Shortcut.Save()

Now, when I create the shortcut, how do I add to the script to make it default to running as Administrator?

Answer 1

This answer is a PowerShell translation of an excellent answer to this question How can I use JScript to create a shortcut that uses "Run as Administrator".

In short, you need to read the .lnk file in as an array of bytes. Locate byte 21 (0x15) and change bit 6 (0x20) to 1. This is the RunAsAdministrator flag. Then you write you byte array back into the .lnk file.

In your code this would look like this:

$WshShell = New-Object -comObject WScript.Shell
$Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut("$Home\Desktop\ColorPix.lnk")
$Shortcut.TargetPath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\ColorPix\ColorPix.exe"
$Shortcut.Save()

$bytes = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes("$Home\Desktop\ColorPix.lnk")
$bytes[0x15] = $bytes[0x15] -bor 0x20 #set byte 21 (0x15) bit 6 (0x20) ON
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes("$Home\Desktop\ColorPix.lnk", $bytes)

If anybody want to change something else in a .LNK file you can refer to official Microsoft documentation.