What is a “Select Administrator”? Is that some special elite kind of administrator?

Raymond Chen

November 1st, 202210 1

A customer wanted to know why, when they opened a command prompt, the title was “Select Administrator”.

Select Administrator: C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
(c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
 
C:\Windows\System32>
 
 
 
 
 
                 
 

What is a “Select Administrator”? Is that some special elite kind of administrator?

No, that’s not what “Select Administrator” is saying.

In fact, it’s not even “Select Administrator”.

The clue is the white box in the command prompt window that the customer included in the screen shot.

That white box is evidence that the user clicked in the command prompt window with the mouse and initiated a selection. When a selection is active, the word “Select” is added to the front of the title.

What we really have is two unrelated adornments. One for selection, and another for elevation.

SelectionTitle
↓ ↓
SelectAdministrator:C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
 ↑ 
 Elevation 

The customer noted that they get this “Select Administrator” only when they launch the command prompt a certain way from a specific program. My guess is that the customer is double-clicking something that launches the command prompt on a single click. The command prompt appears after the first click, and the second click goes to the command prompt and triggers the selection.

So the solution is to single-click, not double-click. If you double-click by mistake, you can hit Esc to exit selection mode.

Raymond Chen