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Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

One of the missing things from Windows Vista that most perplexed me (or frustrated the monkey cr*p out of me) was the lack of the RunAs shell extension. Following proper administrative best practices, I don't log in to my laptop with domain administrative privileges, I have a separate account for that. Running something like ADUC was never easy, and UAC in Vista often got in the way. If you turned it off, you could not get prompted to run an application under a different set of credentials. You could set it under the local security policy to always prompt for credentials, and then enter your other set of credentials. of course, then you get prompted to enter your credentials for everything under the sun. Its a good security practice, but boy does it get old quick. Very quick. This utility returns the traditional right-click RunAs functionality to the explorer shell. Enjoy. Rejoice.

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Print | posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 10:34 AM

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# re: Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

left by Lukas Beeler at 3/5/2008 5:41 AM Gravatar
I've been using "always enter credentials" since i've started using Vista. It's even enforced by GPO on all our machines.

It's roughly the same as "sudo" (which i've been using on Linux systems for proper privilege seperation).

And i think UAC with just Cancel/Allow is worthless - if you have to key in your username and password, you'll think more.

On test machines, it's of course a whole nother topic. But it never disturbed me on my laptop.

# re: Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

left by :o( at 3/7/2008 3:37 AM Gravatar
just another thing that proves that vista sux

# re: Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

left by Manne at 3/8/2008 4:17 PM Gravatar
I think as Lukas wrote.
Work with user account (non-administrative) on XP and use runas to run an application with administrative rights after entering a password is a better way then Cancel/Allow dialog.
On Vista i have got a problem to use runas.
Now i use the tool runasspc
http://robotronic.de/runasspcEn.html

Let the password option empty if you want to ask for.

# re: Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

left by Sergio Luna at 8/21/2008 12:01 PM Gravatar
Can you send me the steps for using this utility???? I work as an admin, and sometimes we need to run applications as admin using the run as feature........

I already downloded the utility, thanks.

# re: Hallelujah! Shell RunAs for Windows Vista

left by Nathan at 1/12/2009 3:31 PM Gravatar
FWIW- Shellrunas works good for most things except it's not as perfect as what windowsXP used to have or as good as runas.exe which unfortunately doesn't have any interface and ends up being a pain in the rear to use.

What I mean by not perfect is that there are some compatability problems with several applications including sql server management studio. You get an application error if you try to import SSIS packages when using shellrunas, i've also come accross problems running third party apps that used to work just fine on XP's runas.

Sadly, i cannot believe the features that microsoft removed from Vista. For an administrator/power user Vista is a downgrade from XP.
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