I’m Joe Russell, and in this article I will explain the “The requested operation requires elevation” message in Windows Vista.

Why?

In my days of tech support, I found a fast way to open the command prompt using (Windows key) + R, cmd, (ENTER). Since upgrading to Windows Vista, this has proven to be a less efficient way. With Vista came security advances. Operations that require an administrator account are protected by Microsoft’s UAC. Many command-line programs are protected by UAC. If you try to use one of these programs (e.g. ipconfig /flushdns) you will be given the message “The requested operation requires elevation”.

Fix:

To open a UAC-protected program from the command prompt, you must open a command prompt as an administrator. I will show you the long way and the short way.

Long Way

1. Start
2. All Programs
3. Accessories
4. Right-click on Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator

Short Way

The short way actually takes longer than the long way to set up, but in the end is faster to use. You may also do this to any other shortcut to have it run as administrator.

1. Create a shortcut pointing to the command prompt
2. Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties
3. Select the Shortcut tab
4. Advanced
5. Check Run as Administrator
6. OK, OK

The shortcut will now open the command prompt as administrator, and you will no longer encounter the “The requested operation requires elevation” message.

Notes:

You must be running an account with administrative privileges to run the command prompt as administrator.