Runas in another Windows terminal session

bodacydo picture bodacydo · Nov 13, 2014 · Viewed 14.7k times · Source

For simplicity, let's say the user Administrator is logged in in terminal session 2. Another user Boda is logged in terminal session 3.

Is it possible to runas a program in session 3 from session 2?

For simplicity, let's say I want to start calc.exe in session 3 (in Boda's session). How do I do that? Can it be done with runas?

Answer

jpw picture jpw · Mar 8, 2015

Like Harry Johnston suggested in a comment you can do this using the psexec tool available on TechNet. I've tried it using a Windows 2008 Server running Terminal Services and managed to start various applications in another users session (although not calc.exe - it started but minimized and the window refused to restore), among them cmd.exe.

The command I used was psexec.exe -i 3 cmd.exe where 3 is the session number (that you can get from qwinsta.exe).

Example: Remote session, logged on as Administrator; using qwinsta to enumerate sessions and psexec to start cmd.exe on another session. enter image description here

Another session: logged on as Patrick, with the cmd.exe window on the desktop opened by Administrator (which the window title reveals too). enter image description here