run-as-admin | Golang example of using a manifest file | SSH Utils library

Quoting this excellent answer which explains really well what you're doing wrong:

PowerShell aliases do not allow for arguments.
They can only refer to a command name, which can be the name of a cmdlet or a function, or the name / path of a script or executable

And from the official Docs:

The Set-Alias cmdlet creates or changes an alias for a cmdlet or a command, such as a function, script, file, or other executable. An alias is an alternate name that refers to a cmdlet or command.

This should help you understand what is going:

There should be read first the following Microsoft documentation pages:

• WOW64 Implementation Details
• File System Redirector
• Registry Keys Affected by WOW64

There are two system directories on 64-bit Windows with a processor with AMD64 architecture:

1. %SystemRoot%\System32 with 64-bit applications used by 64-bit applications by default.
2. %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64 with 32-bit applications used by 32-bit applications by default.

The system environment variable PATH contains by Windows default %SystemRoot%\System32 as first folder path. If a 32-bit application starts cmd.exe to process a batch file, there is started 32-bit %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\cmd.exe because of the file system redirector.

cmd.exe is searching for files specified in a batch file just with file name without or with file extension and without path by using the local environment variables PATHEXT and PATH as explained in full details by What is the reason for "X is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file"?

wsl.exe belongs to the set of executables which on AMD64 Windows exists only as 64-bit version in %SystemRoot%\System32. There is no 32-bit version in %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64 searched by 32-bit cmd.exe on using %SystemRoot%\System32 in expanded form in local PATH because of file system redirector. For that reason the batch file as posted in the question does not work on being processed by 32-bit cmd.exe on Windows x64.

The solution is taking WOW64 into account with additional code in the batch file:

If you don't want to prompt the UAC in the moment of the administrative operation (using runas), or on every program start (via manifest), you need to create a Service or a Scheduled Task once, at first program setup. A lot of programs use this technique such as Chrome for updates, which normally don't require elevated privileges but for few occasional operations.

Choosing the service method means that you must implement an IPC mechanism for example via named pipe so the low privilege program can talk to the service and ask to execute the desired operation. Keep in mind that the service will always run in background and you shouldn't expose too much permissive operations otherwise other malicious programs could use your service to elevate themselves, or you'll need also an authentication method.

For the scheduled task you could use the same executable with a command line argument like /disabletouch. You only need to manually trigger the task from the low privilege instance. There are the TaskScheduler COM interface (some open-source wrappers exists around it) and the schtasks tool that allow task creation and manual triggers. The task can be created for running as Administrator or SYSTEM account. As for the service allow only strict and harmless elevated operations to prevent misuse.

I want Visual Studio 2019 on Windows 10 to always run as administrator from the task bar icon.

Right-click the Visual Studio icon in your taskbar, or the shortcut on your desktop > right-click Visual Studio 2019 > Properties > Advanced... > Run as administrator > OK > Apply

Now when you open Visual Studio from the taskbar, you should see ADMIN in upper-right corner!

I don't think the issue is connected to whether you're running elevated or not.

Assuming you're running in a console (terminal), you can clear the keyboard buffer as follows (adapted from this C# answer):