When you logon and use your computer at home, are you an administrator or a user? Most would have to reluctantly answer “administrator” – we know it is wrong, but as a user with restricted “standard” rights there is just too much you cannot do. At work it is common policy for administrators to have two accounts- a user account and an admin account, using the admin account only when logging into servers or performing certain tasks that require it. In such an environment, RunAs becomes a regularly used utility allowing you to launch certain applications with your “admin account” while still logged in with your regular “user account”. Anyone that has to do this will tell you it is a real nuisance.

A very welcome feature of Windows Vista is User Account Control (UAC) which aims to solve this problem. If you are familiar with RunAs, you may think of it like this: if you are a user or an admin, you actually run as a standard (restricted) account. Then, when you do something that requires admin privileges you are automatically prompted to allow the task to take place. At this point if you are logged in as an admin, you can just answer “OK” and let it happen, if you are not an admin you are given the opportunity to provide admin credentials so that it may happen.

In the end this offers the benefit of a locked down environment, without stopping people from doing their work. Further, the system is far less likely to be impacted by malicious software (malware and adware).