Archive for July, 2008

Tips for working with user privileges while being able to quickly become an Administrator (Windows XP)

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

To start the device manager as Administrator, issue the following command in the Run dialog (Win+R):

runas /user:Administrator /savecred “cmd /c devmgmt.msc”

This way you can edit device settings quickly. You may use any other control panel applet (.msc or .cpl files) instead if devmgmt.msc, too. You will be prompted for the credentials of user “Administrator” once, but then runas will save the credentials (thanks to the /savecred flag).

If you selected the option start each folder in a separate process in the Administrator’s folder settings, you can similarly start an explorer windows with admin rights:

runas /user:Administrator /savecred explorer

With that window, you can install MSI files requiring admin privileges, start up control panel, etc.

If you simply want to start a single program as administrator, just right click the .exe file and select “run as”.

Solution: Authentication problems with Windows File Shares

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

When you try to connect to a remote Windows file share, you might find that you are not asked for username and password (but you should have been), but can connect to the share server. But when opening any share, you won’t be granted accesss since your credentials are wrong. A similar issue might be that you won’t be given access to a remote windows server at all in first place, and the file share server doesn’t ask for credentials, too.

The solution for this issue is simple:

  1. In Control Panel, select User Accounts.
  2. On the left hand side, select “Manage own network passwords”.
  3. Add a new entry with the server you wish to connect to (without leading \\’s) as server name and SERVER\USERNAME as username, where SERVER is the remote server and USER is the username you wish to authenticate as on the file share.
  4. Now, try to connect to the share again. You should be either given access immediately, or you should at least be asked for your credentials which you can enter then.

Introduction

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

Hi there!

In this blog, we will post solutions about problems we experienced with our computers. Maybe you can find some of these solutions useful, too.