Interesting Find (Win XP,Vista,Win7)

[T3rminus]

So I found this a while ago when I was doing some searching in CMD. I dont really remember how I got to this point exactly but I will just tell you what it is.

I call this little glitch "account stacking" I dont really know if anyone has ever seen it before so I could just be saying something everyone has known about for years lol.

Hit WINKEY+R and type "CMD" to open CMD.
Once opened type the following commands: (*)

Code: Select all

Taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
Runas /User:Username C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.exe

It will ask you for the account password...So give it...Then it will open the explorer.exe for the other account. But is that it? NO! It will also open the Desktop GUI for the account you entered, as well as other programs that are run with that. I dont think that this is something that Microsoft intended, because if you open up taskmgr again and look at the process you are now running the processes for two seperate accounts instead of just one.

Oh and btw everything that you open while "account stacking" is going to open with the permission level of the "stacked" account. The only link back to the original is Taskmgr or to keep the CMD window you used open. Because both of those are still running with your original permission level.

I almost forgot. To Exit:
Run Taskmgr (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC)
Kill Explorer.exe (Make sure to kill all other programs under the "stacked" account as well.)
Then go up to the top of Taskmgr and hit File>Run>Explorer.exe

There you have it

WARNING: THIS IS A VERY GLITCHY THING TO DO. MAY CAUSE FREZZEZ AND OR FORCED RESTARTS!


I hope that you enjoy. I HOPE its new

Peace

-Phill



(*) This works best if you have a Admin account running it, but it is possible to do it with a standard account. I will explain howto with Admin.

[tremor77]

That's nothing new really and in a way it is intended, through the 'Fast User Switching' capability in the windows platforms... you are basically doing the same thing as clicking the start menu and clicking switch user (if user switching fast switching is enabled). If you ever do this and go to the login screen (the one that is graphically represented) you will see the usernames and icons..

user1 - 2 programs running
user2 - 1 program running

etc...

For a fast practical user switch if one was ever needed, what you came up with could be a cute batch script that you could put on your desktop... although atm i cant think of any practical applications for this... perhaps as an administration tool to quickly bounce to admin from a user account on a domain network, although security policies may prevent this in that scenario.

[insomaniacal]

Yea, I'm pretty sure thats intended. If another user has permissions to something you don't, and you don't want to logout and login as another user, it saves a lot of time by reloading a program as another user, assuming you have their password.