How to request Administrator access inside a batch file

Question

I am trying to write a batch file for my users to run from their Vista machines with UAC. The file is re-writing their hosts file, so it needs to be run with Administrator permissions. I need to be able to send them an email with a link to the .bat file. The desired behavior is that when they right-click on the file and say Open, they will get one of those UAC dialogs that makes the screen go dark and forces them to answer whether they want to give the application permission to run as administrator. Instead, they are just seeing "Access denied" on the command line window.

Is this possible to do differently?

Answer 1

This script does the trick! Just paste it into the top of your bat file. If you want to review the output of your script, add a "pause" command at the bottom of your batch file.

UPDATE: This script is now slightly edited to support command line arguments and a 64 bit OS.

Thank you Eneerge @ https://sites.google.com/site/eneerge/scripts/batchgotadmin

@echo off

:: BatchGotAdmin
:-------------------------------------
REM  --> Check for permissions
    IF "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" EQU "amd64" (
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\config\system"
) ELSE (
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"
)

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
    echo Requesting administrative privileges...
    goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
    echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    set params= %*
    echo UAC.ShellExecute "cmd.exe", "/c ""%~s0"" %params:"=""%", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

    "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    exit /B

:gotAdmin
    pushd "%CD%"
    CD /D "%~dp0"
:--------------------------------------    
    <YOUR BATCH SCRIPT HERE>