Running Windows File Explorer As Administrator

Winuser said:

As long as you keep the driver blocked from being installed you shouldn't run into any problems using the Memory Integrity setting.

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I'm not at all sure how to go about blocking it. Don't know what WUMT is or

Winuser said:

As long as you keep the driver blocked from being installed you shouldn't run into any problems using the Memory Integrity setting.

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I don't know how to do that. I don't know what WUMT is or what Wushowhide.diagcab is or how to use them.

HDL said:

I don't know what WUMT is or what Wushowhide.diagcab is or how to use them.

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Wushowhide.diagcab is a very old tool from Microsoft, first released for the initial version of W10. Still works in 11. It's a very simple tool that just allows you to block one or more updates that Windows Update would otherwise deliver. It's very simple to use.


WUMT is a third party app that manges all your updates. It give you full control over which, if any, updates you wish to install. As such, it's more complex to use, but more powerful.

Thank you. I will look into both of them.

I seem to remember in Win 10 or possibly Win 7 individual updates could be blocked at the Windows Update site. I haven't seen that option available lately.

HDL said:

I seem to remember in Win 10 or possibly Win 7 individual updates could be blocked at the Windows Update site.

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In Windows 7 you could configure Window Update to let you pick and choose which updates to install, and to let you hide those you didn't want.

In the initial release of Windows 10 there was no choice, Home automatically installed updates and Pro only let you pause all updates, but not choose which to install when you resumed. Microsoft very quickly realised there were a few rare cases where a particular update (usually a driver) had to be blocked and released wushowhide.diagcab.

Bree said:

(usually a driver) had to be blocked and released wushowhide.diagcab

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I downloaded it yesterday from MS and had to give it permission to download.

Winuser said:

I downloaded it yesterday from MS and had to give it permission to download.

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Yes, it's on one of their http servers. Browser now won't download from insecure sites unless you jump through a few hoops. That used to be the case for all downloads from the update catalog too, but those MS have now switched to https servers.

HDL said:

When I right click on File Explorer in the Start menu and try to run it as the Administrator, I get a dialog box with the error message you can see in the attachment. Does anyone know how to fix this?

By the way, there is only 1 account, mine, on this computer and I am already supposed to have administrator privileges but often times when using the Command Prompt I still have to Right click and choose Run As Administrator for it to have those privileges.

View attachment 36844

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You very rarely need to. Key point is just because you are a member of the Adminstrator's group certainly does not mean what you are running are running with Admin. The first thing that starts is your desktop. You start everything from there. It does NOT run with Admin no matter who you are (this is good - you shouldn't be running with Admin unless you need it). If it is an old/cheap pgm that needs Admin (1) if its an old pgm, it may assume it is running with Admin and fail; (2) If it is an old/cheap pgm it will check and tell you to re-run it with Admin; (3) It will check, realize it is running w/o Admin and re-execute itself via the Windows Consent pgm. Consent is what darkens your screen and asks permission. If you say yes, Windows launches the requested pgm with Admin and the original execution ends. Now back to your original question - it ain't easy. (1) Start Task Manager; (2) Terminate all instances of EXPLORER.EXE; (3) From Task Manager's menu bar, File/Run New Task, "explorer /nouaccheck" (w/o the quotes). I'd suggest you do what you need to do then terminate Explorer and start it again w/o the /nouaccheck. Note that you must not have checked "Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process". MS has taken great pains to prevent this and it is VERY rarely needed.

GarryG said:

Note that you must not have checked "Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process". MS has taken great pains to prevent this and it is VERY rarely needed.

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Thank you for all that information. I, since starting this thread, found another way to solve my problem.

Please share with us what you ended up doing to solve your problem so others may learn

Spunk said:

Please share with us what you ended up doing to solve your problem so others may learn

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Sorry I thought I had posted the solution. I did post it but it was in another thread I started. Anyway here it is for this thread.

Not sure why I hadn't thought of this before but it worked and I didn't need to run anything with Admin privileges. I used a program I already had installed called iObit Unlocker and deleted those 2 files once I located them using a search program called "Everything."

Spunk said:

Please share with us what you ended up doing to solve your problem so others may learn

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Thinking back, I believe I should have given you a little more information. At the time I posted this thread I was trying to delete two files that were keeping me from enabling Memory Integrity. They were rcblan.sys and wdcsam64_prewin8.sys. I thought by running File Explorer with admin privileges I would be able to do that. With all the cautions I was reading about doing that, I found the other way which I posted for you in my above post. The confusion for me in thinking I had already posted it was I had another thread going at the same time here: Reinstalling Windows 11 and it kind of morphed into trying to solve the problem of deleting those 2 files. I did post the solution I used in that thread and now it is posted in this thread, as well. I hope that helps.