Departmental policy requires our administrators to have two accounts—one with Administrator authority and one without. Systems administrators are supposed to use their Administrator account to perform only tasks that require Administrator authority. We showed administrators how to Shift+Ctrl+ right-click a shortcut (such as Computer Management) to open the Run As dialog box, which lets users choose to run a program under another user account. However, some administrators balk at the extra step. Can we make switching accounts even easier?

You can modify a shortcut so that it automatically prompts your administrators for alternative credentials. Open the shortcut's properties, select the Shortcut tab, and click Advanced to display the Advanced Properties dialog box, which Figure 2 shows. Select the Run with different credentials check box, click OK, then open the shortcut. Windows will automatically display the Run As dialog box, which Figure 3 shows.

—Randy Franklin Smith

End of Article


You must log on before posting a comment.

If you don't have a username & password, please register now.

Reader Comments

This tweak does not seem to be valid with tools in the ADMIN pak. Run As on the short cuts for the AD admin tools are greyed out. I do get Run As with the shift-ctrl-right click.

Jockel Carter- October 07, 2003

This doesn't seem to work for a shortcut to a batch file (*.bat) or a shortcut to a folder or network share (at least not on Windows 2003 Server). The options for "run as" are grayed out on the Advanced Properties dialog box.

jbranders- September 23, 2006

Article Rating 3 out of 5

In addition to my previous post, there was only one line in my batch file. I got a workaround by replacing the batch file with a shortcut pointing to "cmd /K batchcommand", and that shortcut DOES have runas options.

jbranders- September 25, 2006

Article Rating 3 out of 5