Intermittent Issue With Run as Administrator

Tom4400 · 04 Dec 2019

My windows machine suddenly developed a problem that keeps me from running programs as administrator. Very strange, but the problem goes away about 20 minutes after boot up.

I am running Windows 10 pro Version 1909 Build 18363.476
Dell R8 with i9-9900K, 32 GB

Running my normal, user account which is an admin acct

When I start or restart Windows I am unable to run programs as administrator
- No response to Command Prompt as admin (non admin cmd works OK)
- No response to Powershell as admin (non admin works OK)
- File Explorer does not start when selected from task bar (however, if I click in the search window of start menu and select file explorer in the top apps section, it starts OK
- OneDrive grayed out and unresponsive

Then - what seems me to be very weird -- after approx 20 minutes of on time, run as admin suddenly works again. And, the previously non responsive attempts to open file explorer, powershell as admin and cmd as admin suddenly open.

I have a second admin account that I set up for emergency use. That account does not exhibit this issue. If I log into my normal user account and have the run as admin issue described above and then switch users to the backup admin account, I find no issues with the backup account.

I am in over my head on this one. Have searched online sources for ideas. Have run sfc and dism. Ran DISM with /RestoreHealth, and it found some things to clean up, but the problem persists. Also updated to version 1909 since the issue started with the prior version. Have done all current window and driver and BIOS updates.

Appreciate any thought/ideas what I might try. Thanks!

FreeBooter · 04 Dec 2019

I think your user account is corrupted i will say repair install Windows 10 but this will not repair corrupted user account.

Ztruker · 04 Dec 2019

Start by using Clean Boot, see if that makes a difference: See here: How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

Try3 · 04 Dec 2019

I think that your combination of symptoms indicate that you have a Windows problem not a user profile problem. User profile faults should not affect the ability of File explorer to run [but I do appreciate that the other symptoms make it look like a user profile issue].

I agree that running a Repair install could be useful but, personally, I'd run SFC-DISM first and I can see that you have done that already.

If neither fixes the behaviour then it is a fair bet that an application is causing the problems so checking in Safe mode then using Clean boot could identify the culprit.

Of course, if you can remember which application was changed [installed, updated, reconfigured] just before the problem first appeared then removing that as a test would save a lot of work. Or maybe there was a string of untoward events before it all started playing up.

Denis