Run explorer.exe as Administrator user within Windows 7

windows-7 runas
user393014 picture user393014 · Jan 20, 2011 · Viewed 24.8k times · Source

I have the Windows 7 operating system, and I have administrator user credentials stored (known in advance).

I know we can run a program or .exe using "Runas" verb and launch a process, but my question is specific to explorer.exe. I am trying to run "runas /user: "control.exe printers" it launches successfully after giving a password to the prompt, but when I am checking within TaskManager it is running under my regular user with which I have logged on.

I have noticed this is only with explorer.exe. Other programs are working fine as expected with runas.

What is the catch here with Windows 7? Or how do I run explorer.exe or control.exe with printers?

Answer

bittusarkar picture bittusarkar · Jul 1, 2013

Running explorer.exe as a user different from the one that is already logged in using "runas" command is disabled in Windows 7. But there is a workaround for this:

  1. Start -> Run -> regedit
  2. Navigate to the registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID{CDCBCFCA-3CDC-436f-A4E2-0E02075250C2}
  3. Right click on the registry key and click Permissions...
  4. Give Full Control permissions to the user logged in.
  5. Start -> Run -> dcomcnfg.exe -> Expand DCOM Config
  6. Right click and select properties of "Elevated-Unelevated Explorer Factory", click the Identity tab and select "The launching user"

After doing this explorer.exe will launch as the user specified in the RunAs.exe command!

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