Windows 7 Run As Administrator is Broken

[Phonoflux]

This one has me stumped. Something I did today caused what can I only assume to be programs that need to run as administrator to fail. Anything with that little shield next to it.

Examples:
Right clicking on My Computer > Manage wont open but typing manage then clicking on Computer Management from the search will open it.
Remote Desktop pinned jump lists (and recent for that matter) will not open. Opening remote desktop and typing in the computer will work perfectly. Making a shortcut FROM the pinned jumplist on the desktop (right click, drag, make shortcut) works. This one is the most annoying as I am frequently remote desktoping into other computers.

UAC is turned off and has been up until this error started. I have tired turning it back on, restarting, no go. It has now been turned back off.

I have tried logging in as the administrator account, no go. No luck in safe mode either.

When this happens, I can see what appears to be a program icon trying to load then it disappears.
I'm out of ideas and am close to sticking the disc in and running a re-install but thought i'd try here first.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[Phonoflux]

Well.. system restore finally worked, choosing a date from sometime last week rather than monday.. Shrug. Crisis averted.

 

[Phonoflux]

Sad face... I'm now on Windows7Professional with a brand spanking new user profile (nothing copied across, all setup new) and it's happening again!

Exactly the same symptoms as previous, right click my computer > manage doesn't work nor any remote desktop pinned or recent items... Anyone else seen/experienced this?

 

[SIW2]

When you say brand new setup - do you have any programs installed?

Are you using any kind of cleaning/reg cleaning app?

 

[Phonoflux]

ah, Brand New referes to a fresh install from a win7x64 dvd and not copying my profile across from the rc2 install.

No reg cleaning apps. I tried creating a new user and logging in there, restarting and logging in as myself to no avail (doing that has fixed things in the past).

 

[ChristopherS]

I have the same problem. I found a work around after ripping through the registry.

For some reason that I do not know of CompMgmtLauncher.exe fails to start the Computer Manager.

I use the Right-Click->Computer->Manager all the time so I made a work around.


Replace C:\Windows with your %SystemRoot% if you need to.

Create a Batch File under C:\Windows\System32\ called CompMgmtLauncher.bat
Edit CompMgmtLauncher.bat and put in these two lines

Start C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc
Exit

Save batch file and exit

Type Regedit and do a search for CompMgmtLauncher.exe

Mine was located here.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\Manage\command]

Under this key you will find a line that ends in CompMgmtLauncher.exe

Change the exe to bat and Manage should now work.

I know it is not the best fix in the world but it gets your right-click manage back up and running fast.

 

[Phonoflux]

I'm still having this problem.

I really cant be bothered reinstalling windows7 to fix this. Anyone got any more suggestions?

It happens with UAC turned on or off, anything that requires elevated permissions to be accepted in the background e.g. right click my computer, manage, or right click something run as administrator do not work.

this also affects pinned remote desktop shortcuts.

Anyone?

 

[Phonoflux]

I did what is essentially a repair install (chuck the disc in, hit upgrade) and it didn't fix it.

What the hell have I done both times around to get this to happen? ARFGH.

 

[tekdee]

This is happening to me too.

 

[douglascm]

I found a solution

I just solved the same problem, and I posted my solution here:

"Run As Administrator" on program right click failing and not launching program - Server Fault

 

[Captain Jack]

Hello,

I'm suspecting that it might be a bad or corrupt User Profile. Try to create a New Windows Profile and Login under that account then see whether you have the same problem. If it works fine then just transfer the files over.

Hope this helps,
Captain

 

[Phonoflux]

Howdy.

I've tried logging in with different accounts and no joy, even creating a new user and all so it reads off the default user profile (unless THAT is broken too...)

I'm going to format and reinstall soon anyway so it isn't a big deal but its my work computer and is a pain in the *** as i have to fix it during work hours.

I've never seen this problem on any other windows7 computers i've installed.

 

[douglascm]

I have encountered the same problem in win7. I am a Chinese user and found the cause and solved it by searching in Chinese forums.

Its cause is some buggy(maybe programmed old-fashionedly) softwares that add extra entries in the right-click context menu, with a DLL as the context menu handler.

Possible causing softwares includes:
NamiRobot (Link Removed - Invalid URL)
old version Tencent RTX (http://rtx.tencent.com/)

So the solution is either to uninstall the software, or unregister the context menu handler DLL and remove the context menu entry.

In my case, it is NamiRobot. I manually fixed in the following steps:

1. open an elevated command prompt(start -> all programs -> accessories -> command prompt, right click -> run as admin)
2. run the command: regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\NamiRobot\Data\NamipanExt1.dll"
3. run regedit.exe, delete the following keys:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\NamipanExt
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5696473A-FC50-4CA7-B87A-AF60201B04DD}

The three steps are enough to fix the problem. To prevent the software screwing up the context menu again, you may want to do the following:
First rename the original NamipanExt1.dll to "NamipanExt1.dll.bak", then create an empty txt file in the same directory(C:\Program Files\NamiRobot\Data\), finally rename the txt file to "NamipanExt1.dll".

Hope you find your causing software and fix it!

 

[Phonoflux]

Hrmm, you're the first person with a theory and a possible fix.

Appreciate it, i'll try it tomorrow at work and will let you know.

 

[douglascm]

Could you check your right-click context menu and see if there are any strange items that do not belong to Windows 7? I think that's the cause for this problem. In my case it is the NamiRobot that adds one item in the context menu for all file types.

I also have these context menu items and they are fine:
Adobe PDF
WinRAR
Kaspersky
WinHex
UltraEdit
EmEditor
UltraISO

 

[douglascm]

Could you check your right-click context menu and see if there are any strange items that do not belong to Windows 7? I think that's the cause for this problem. In my case it is the NamiRobot that adds one item in the context menu for all file types.

I also have these context menu items and they are fine:
Adobe PDF
WinRAR
Kaspersky
WinHex
UltraEdit
EmEditor
UltraISO

There are rumors that Sony DVD software also causes this problem, I don't know whether it is true.

 

[Phonoflux]

Ok, this is weird, and something I have seen before but it returned a few days after...

I logged in via VPN/Remote desktop and everything I have complained about works perfectly... Right click pinned remote desktop connects to a pinned computer, right click my computer and manage.. curious curious...

I'll test this tomorrow while logged on locally and update.

I do however have winrar and poweriso, so i'll be interested to see if one of those is causing it.

Cheers.

 

[douglascm]

I am using remote desktop too. When the problem exists it doesn't work in remote desktop either. If in remote desktop it works fine, then it definitely works when locally logged on.
WinRAR is fine because the software is in my above mentioned "whitelist". Only NamiRobot and Tencent RTX are in my blacklist.

Perhaps you have already uninstalled the devil.

 

[imasu49]

The context menu thing was a good lead. In my case, it happened to be compareit which was causing the problem. I used the autoruns utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals in the explorer tab, unchecked the the items under the contextmenuhandlers and used a divide and conquer approach to determine which component was the culprit.

 

[nisdis]

Thank You Christopher ... This worked just fine.
But i still don't know why CompMgmtLauncher.exe is not running.

Anywho thanks again !