Is there a way I can make a shortcut itself execute a program as Administrator

Question

Backstory: I have an older Windows 10 PC that I use for some testing. It's always been clean of malware but it gets slower after it's been on for a while.

Some of the programs I use on it take a little while to start and it itself takes a minute to start, so I try to avoid restoring it.

I found this link on Flush Memory without restarting your PC

The gist is you can flush memory without restarting by:

• Create shortcut to %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
• Pin it to taskbar.

But it didn't seem to help til I ran it as Administrator, which is easy to do, but you can't make a taskbar shortcut Run as Administrator. Once I ran it as administrator, it helped quite a bit.

I'm hesitant to mess with rundll directly, partly because I don't need security prompts every time something accesses it, but I like to keep moderate UAC on this device.

Is there some type of batch file or C#/VB application I can create just to do this? I have Visual Studio installed.

Note: One of the things this flushes is video memory of other applications, so some of your programs may take a minute to render. Save your work before hand, but give the program a minute to re-render if it needs it.

Answer 1

Thanks to the Ultrasonic's anser, I actually found the option under Properties >> Shortcut >> Advanced, no compatibility tab is showing for me.

However, it didn't change anything, but I searched where that Icon folder is and found this

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar (Valid in Windows 10) and changed the properties there, which achieved the result I wanted.

Answer 2

You could link the taskbar shortcut to a regular shortcut, which will in turn link to your desired program. In the compatibility tab of the regular shortcut, select Run as Administrator. Now every time you click the shortcut on your taskbar, rundll32.exe should run as administrator (with UAC of course.)

Answer 3

Right click on the shortcut icon then click properties>compatibility>check the "run this program as administrator" checkbox, apply then click OK.