as the title says I'm a beginner with Python. I have started to work on what I thought first was a simple enough script for scanning a folder and printing the names of each subdirectory to a CMD prompt.

However, I've run into an issue where the function in the code below does not execute. I suspect it's to do with Windows permissions which is why I've added in the is_admin(): function.

My question is, what is it that is causing the function to skip? and what is the proper way to achieve what it is I am trying to do?

Any and all help is appreciated and if anyone could point me in the direction for learning more about Python and the Windows OS technical side for programmers would be doing me a huge favor.

Thanks in advance :)

import os, sys, ctypes

def is_admin():
    try:
        return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
    except:
        return False

if is_admin():
    rootdir = 'C:/Windows'  
def listdirs(rootdir):
    for file in os.listdir(rootdir):
        d = os.path.join(rootdir, file)
        if os.path.isdir(d):
            print(d)
            listdirs(d)
            listdirs(rootdir)

        else:
            ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv\[1:\]), None, 1)

            input('Press any key to continue...')

Expecting the program to:

Produce an output of all the subdirectories of a folder printed to a CMD prompt window and have the window stay open when the program has finished executing each line of code. The Window should remain open until the user is finished with it. The Windows UAC should prompt asking the user if they wish to run as admin, if the user is already an admin then it should skip this and proceed to run the program.