Run as another user, but also as administrator

Question

I am trying to debug a virtual machine (VM) running on a remote computer from my workstation (A). Both VM and A are running Windows 7 Enterprise.

Apparently, I need to start the Remote Debugger Service (RDS) on VM as an administrator.

Apparently, I also need to run RDS as the user Tewr logged in on A (domain: DOM).

VM runs the services i need to debug, as well as the remote desktop interface with an account VMUSER in a domain called VMDOMAIN.

I manage to start RDS as administrator, but then the RDS process is owned by VMUSER and that's not good enough. I also manage to run RDS as DOM\Tewr, but then not as an administrator. I have Added DOM\Tewr as an administrator on VM, but thats not good enough becuase the process is still not run as administrator.

How can I run the RDS process as DOM\Tewr and "As Administrator", while logged on in windows as VMDOMAIN\VM?

(note: I have tried creating an account with the same credentials / password as VMUSER, as hinted in the ms article above, but with no luck...)

Answer 1

You need to configure auto-elevation for members of the local administrators group or make the user Tewr a member of the Domain Admins group. By default on Windows 7 (and Vista\W2k8) only the local Administrator account (the one with the S-1-5-21..500 SID) or members of the Domain Admins Group automatically elevate.

If you don't want to add the test user account to Domain Admins for this exercise then you can modify the default behaviour by GPO - What you want to do is change "User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" - you can find details on how to do this here.

Answer 2

Perhaps psexec tool from sysinternals might be able to resolve your issue.

Here is the link.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx

I used this tool for similar task but you might want to check it out. HTH.