How-to Avoid Vista's UAC for Frequently Used Applications

You can use the Vista Task Scheduler to launch applications with admin privilege without the User Account Control (UAC) confirmation dialog.  To do this:

• Open Task Scheduler
• Create a new folder for the application you want to launch, or use an existing folder (if it seems to fit)
• Create a new task
  • General
    • Name: <something simple, this is how you will refer to the task when launching it>
    • Description: <where you can give a lot more detail about what you’re doing>
    • Run only when user is logged on
    • Run with highest privileges
  • Actions
    • Start a program <path to your program, arguments, etc.>
  • Conditions
    • <Adjust as needed>
  • Settings
    • Allow task to be run on demand
    • <Adjust other settings as needed>
• Once the new task is created, you can update your shortcut to the application with the following command (or just run it from the command line):
  C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn "\<folder where task is located in task scheduler>\<name of task, see above>"

One of the nice side benefits in doing things this way is you get to use the Task Scheduler’s built-in logging capabilities.