How To Check If A Process Is Running As Admin

Depending what tasks you're doing at the time, In order to perform certain functions, some programs and applications are required to run with full administrator privileges. It's easy enough to determine this when you happen to execute an application there and then with admin rights, but the same cannot be said when they're already running In the background as a process. In this tutorial, I will show you how to check If a process Is running as administrator.


It's not only legit processes that're of concern, but If your computer Is Infected with a nasty virus, It can cause significant damage when running with admin privileges. Basically, the virus will have elevated permissions to do whatever It likes on your PC. For these reasons, It's very Important to Identify the nature of running processes.

There are quite a number of third-party tools, such as Process Explorer, that allow you to check the admin status of processes, but there's no point In using an external source when It can be done natively within Windows 10. The built-In utility that I'm referring to, Is the good old Task Manager. So without further ado, let's get this tutorial started.

Step One:

There are many ways to access Task Manager, one of which Is to open the Run menu, enter taskmgr and hit OK.

Step Two:

Task Manager will now execute, so select the Details tab, right-click Description and hit Select columns as shown below.

Step Three:

Now scroll down until you find both Elevated and UAC Virtualization. Click on each checkbox, and hit OK.

Step Four:

The Elevated & UAC Virtualization columns, have been created, and you can now see which processes are running as admin. Yes means they obviously are, and No Indicates they're not. The Not allowed, denotes elevated admin privileges and Disabled Is not subject to UAC virtualization.

Last Step:

If you're not sure as to the type of process that's currently running, right-click It and select Search online. This Is a very beneficial feature- as It provides an array of details about the process In question.

Final Thoughts:

It doesn't get any easier than this, does It? The procedure to Identify whether processes are running as administrator, Is extremely simple, yet the feature Is somewhat hidden. In my view and taking the power of elevated privileges Into account, I believe the Elevated & UAC Virtualization columns should have been defaulted to Task Manager, and not buried away from view. Be sure to keep It enabled at all times.