How do you run CMD.exe under the Local System Account?
I'm currently running Vista and I would like to manually complete the same operations as my Windows Service. Since the Windows Service is running under the Local System Account, I would like to emulate this same behavior. Basically, I would like to run CMD.EXE under the Local System Account.
I found information online which suggests lauching the CMD.exe using the DOS Task Scheduler AT command, but I received a Vista warning that "due to security enhancements, this task will run at the time excepted but not interactively." Here's a sample command:
AT 12:00 /interactive cmd.exe
Another solution suggested creating a secondary Windows Service via the Service Control (sc.exe) which merely launches CMD.exe.
C:\sc create RunCMDAsLSA binpath= "cmd" type=own type=interact
C:\sc start RunCMDAsLSA
In this case the service fails to start and results it the following error message:
FAILED 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
The third suggestion was to launch CMD.exe via a Scheduled Task. Though you may run scheduled tasks under various accounts, I don't believe the Local System Account is one of them.
I've tried using the Runas as well, but think I'm running into the same restriction as found when running a scheduled task.
Thus far, each of my attempts have ended in failure. Any suggestions?
Answer
Though I haven't personally tested, I have good reason to believe that the above stated AT COMMAND solution will work for XP, 2000 and Server 2003. Per my and Bryant's testing, we've identified that the same approach does not work with Vista or Windows Server 2008 -- most probably due to added security and the /interactive switch being deprecated.
However, I came across this article which demonstrates the use of PSTools from SysInternals (which was acquired by Microsoft in July, 2006.) I launched the command line via the following and suddenly I was running under the Local Admin Account like magic:
psexec -i -s cmd.exe
PSTools works well. It's a lightweight, well-documented set of tools which provides an appropriate solution to my problem.
Many thanks to those who offered help.