In the past I’ve had numerous occasions where I wanted to run a program or system to run under the local system user context. Most of them involved customers and application administrators that wanted to have a service or scheduled task configured. They often weren’t able to tell me if it was sufficient to run the service or scheduled task as local system or that a special service account would have to be created.
The issue I always ran into when I wanted to test this, is that you had to provide a password that you didn’t know if you wanted to use “Run As” with the local system account.
Recently I ran into the “Run As System” application. It enables you to start a program or run command and script under a local system account. It is UAC compatible, but it requires administrative privileges.
Another use of the “Run As System” application is if you want to access files or folders that are normally not accessible for users. This can come in handy when troubleshooting Offline Files. The tool might not work correctly with Windows Explorer though, so you should consider using other tools like Total Commander.
Other methods to run something as system can be found here.
For more tools and applications, take a look at my website: http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/Lists/Applications/Summary.aspx
Tags: application, Explorer, File Explorer, ICT, local system, local system user context, Microsoft, offline files, Permissions, Run as System, scheduled task, Script, system, system user, tool, Total Commander, Windows Explorer
Last week I got a beta exam invite for exam “70-688 Managing and Maintaining Windows 8” (in beta it is 71-688). As with most beta exams lately, you only have max two weeks to prepare and there are no books available yet that you can use to study. Therefore I start with looking at what skills are being measured and if there are preparation guides available. From there on I start looking for relevant learning resources for each subject and adding them to the skills that are being measured for easy future reference.
I hope it is useful for you as well.
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