November 1st, 2022
likeheart3 reactions

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

Raymond Chen

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.

Selection Title
↓   ↓
Select Administrator: 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.

Category

Topics

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

10 comments

Discussion is closed. Login to edit/delete existing comments.

Sort by :
  • Krzysztof Kawa

    In Polish it says “WybierzAdministrator”, missing the space between words. I wonder if the original English string is “Select “, containing the space at the end, and whatever process of translation it went through trimmed the trailing whitespace, not deeming it important.

    • Raymond ChenMicrosoft employee Author

      Thanks for pointing this out. Looks like an issue with the translation infrastructure. The trailing space got trimmed before being presented for translation, and nobody added the space back after translation. I’ll file a bug.

  • Jan RingoÅ¡ · Edited

    Windows 7 SP1? So that’s as far as your backlog still goes? 😉

    Also I was thinking the banner message could use an overhaul. Display full product name, like in winver.exe, and perhaps whoami, e.g. my computer would show:

    Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise N 2016 LTSB [Version 10.0.14393.5427]
    (c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
    Administrator: computer.domain.local\JanRingos

  • Michael Spam

    Many times I’ve sat waiting for a command to finish, only to find I’d accidently highlighted a space on the screen and the whole console is paused waiting for me to do something with it.
    Often happens when clicking on a window to bring it into focus when it already had focus.

  • Henry Skoglund

    Reminds me of the old “Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?”

    • Flux

      He’s the superior officer of Major Malfunction. 😉

      • Charles Dye

        And Colonel Fault, obviously.

      • Masamune3210

        A General Protection Fault must be General Failure getting not-alived lol

Read next