Computer Management local admin vs domain admin

Not exactly sure this is the right section for this question, but it does have to do with user accounts and permissions.

So, as standard practice, I use a normal user login as my daily work account, and have a separate login for a domain admin account (basically, something like "fwulf" as daily, "fwadm" as admin). And since I do a lot of software test installs, what I did is give my daily account local admin rights (through Computer Management > System Tools > Local Users and Groups > Groups > Administrators) so as to not make it annoying when the admin prompt pops.

Now the thing is, one of the functions of the Computer Management utility that I have to use more or less frequently is to have it connect to our file share server, and close out files that have been left open so that other users can get in them (and a specific Excel file getting special mention for needing this almost weekly).

The issue that I have is that if I open Computer Management as local admin, when I try to connect to the server, it does not prompt me for credentials, and thus, while it does connect, when I click on System Tools > Shared Folders > Open Files, it will fail and give me a permission error. The only way that I can do this right now, is to remove my local admin rights, re-login, and start the CM as admin, thus allowing me to enter my domain admin credentials (and reverse it once I'm done).

So the question is: How can I get the credentials prompt when I connect to the server while still keeping my local admin rights on my daily account so that I don't need to remove/put back myself from the local group.

Maybe someone has some better ideas, but here are a couple of things that should work:

1) Remote desktop into the machine in question using the desired credentials. Then run Computer Management in that remote desktop session rather than from your local system.

2) I have a colleague who makes use of a virtual machine for this purpose. With that VM he logs on with the desired account and then uses Computer Management from that VM to connect to the server.

Simply create a cmd file then run that


runas /user:domainname\username program

hsehestedt said:

1) Remote desktop into the machine in question using the desired credentials. Then run Computer Management in that remote desktop session rather than from your local system.

First thing I tried obviously. Unfortunately, it seems the Shared Folders option is missing. Not sure if it's because it's a Server 2008 or if there's a deeper problem.

As for the VM, I just think it'd be redundant, even more so that we actually have kind of have too many superfluous VMs that only exist for running single barely used programs already. But that's a different story.

Samuria said:

Simply create a cmd file then run that
runas /user:domainname\username program

This could work, although to make it work it's going to need a bit more configuration than just that.
See, Computer Management isn't a program in itself. It's a module for the Microsoft Management Console.
I can start it through Powershell with runas /user:domain\user mmc, but when the console is started this way, it's basically a blank console in which I need to add back the Computer Management module.

This will need further investigation tomorrow.