XP Practical Tips: Get Permissions

        If the user you are logged into the system has permission restrictions, then when you need to run programs with higher privileges to run, you need to log out of the current user and log in to the system with a high-privileged user account. We don't need to do this in the professional version of Windows XP. We can use "Run as" to run a single program with a high-privilege account.

Right-click on the program icon in "Desktop" or "My Computer" and select "Run Mode". In the pop-up page (as shown in Figure 1), select the "The following users" radio button, then enter a high-privileged user account in the user name, and then enter the corresponding password. This way we can run the application with the new input.

Figure 1 Selecting Run Identity

If you need an application to always ask which user to run at runtime, then set it up by following the steps below. Right click on the application icon, select "Properties" in the pop-up menu, and then select "Advanced" in the pop-up dialog box. The page shown in Figure 2 pops up.

Figure 2 Run as a different user

Click on "OK" before running "Run as other user" on the page shown in Figure 2. Now every time you run the program, you will be asked which user to run as.