Tired of continually entering 'Run as...' credentials?

If you're like me, you'll be running your workstation under a low priviledge user account for most tasks and using an elevated priviledge account to perform your administrative duties. Well, I get fed up of continually right clicking an application shortcut, selecting Run as... and entering my elevated user credentials to launch my working toolsets. This is always the case on Monday morning, when my workstation has been powered down over the weekend to save the Planet

So, to reduce my number of keystrokes to a minimum, I've created a custom MMC full of my favourite tools and now all I have to do on Monday morning is launch the msc file the once using Run as... and all my tools now run under the elevated credentials with a single click.

Here's a sample 'Run As Tools' MMC.

And here's how you can start to create your own 'Run As Tools' custom MMC. 

Click Start, Run..., type MMC and click OK to open a blank MMC console.

From the Action menu, select New Task Pad View... and click Next.

In the Task Pad Display window, select No list and click Next.

At the Taskpad Target window, keep the defaults and click Next.

Enter a Name and Description for the task pad and click Next.

At the Completing the New Taskpad View Wizard window, ensure Start New Task wizard is ticked and click Finish.

At the Welcome to the New Task Wizard window, click Next.

In the Command Type window, select Shell command and click Next.

In the Enter commands and Parameters window, enter details for the program to run. Here, I am choosing the SMS 2003 administrator console. Click Next when complete.

In the Name and Description window, enter your task name and give it a description. Click Next.

In the Task Icon window, either choose to use an icon provided by MMC, or select Custom Icon and Browse... to a custom icon.

Here, I am selecting the icon for the root node of an SMS 2003 MMC. Click OK.

Click Next to proceed.

In the Completing the New Task Wizard window, tick Run this Wizard again to continue to add further tasks. Click Finish.

From the MMC View menu, select Customize... and deselect Console tree. Click OK.

If you want to add groupings of task types, you can run through the New Taskpad View again to add additional Taskpad tabs to the console view.

When you've finished constructing your custom console, select Options... from the File menu and put the console into Author Mode, so you can make changes as you wish.

Maximize the Console Root window within the MMC, to fill the MMC window.

From the File menu, Save your newly created ‘Run As' toolset console.

Now, all you have to do is launch the console (e.g. Run As Tools.msc) with a right click Run as... using your elevated credentials. All the tasks within the console will now run with a single click under the elevated credentials. Now that saves a lot of typing!

Try adding tasks like Regedit, compmgmt, Adv Client Spy, SMS Trace, CMD.exe, SSMS, IE (for remotely browsing computers)*, etc., to provide a suite of remote management utilities.

*Windows will only let you run one instance of explorer.exe, so use