How do I run as a different user on a shortcut in Windows 7?
On Windows XP, I had the ability to mark a shortcut as being run by a different user, so that every time I ran it it would prompt me for a username/password. This let me have two shortcuts for things like SQL Server Management Studio, one for my normal account and one for my domain administrator account which has access to production servers.
I can get to the ‘Run as different user’ option with Shift + right-click, but I can’t see an option anywhere that would let me mark the shortcut as doing this every time.
Solution:
- Right-click > New > Shortcut
- For Target, type “runas /user:domainuser program.exe”
I think you can replace “domain” with the computer name if you want it to use a local account.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/windows_security_runas_shortcut.mspx?mfr=true
The link above is for XP, but I was able to do this in Windows 7. When you double-click the shortcut, it will open a cmd that will prompt you for the user’s password. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t display asterisks (or anything) as you type in the password. However, I did just test it and it is accepting the password you type.