Windows XP RunAs feature is horribly broken

Switching back to Windows XP from the Mac has been educational. Along with learning a lot more about Cygin than I had ever known before, I’m discovering new features-to-be-avoided in Windows XP. Here is a biggie: “Run As”.
Windows allows you to execute programs with another user’s credentials. You are probability thinking “Simple right?”. Well, it isn’t. Using this feature seems to consistently corrupt the RunAs-ed user’s profile. Corrupted profiles seem to be a mysterious thing with little to no way to fix them; creating a new profile is basically the only solution. In my case I restored from a nightly backup (because I know stuff like this is bound to happen on Windows). My takeaway:
Disable RunAs on Windows!
Here is how.

2 thoughts on “Windows XP RunAs feature is horribly broken”

  1. Hi Grant. I’m glad you enjoy your brand new WinXP. Btw, do you know, Red Hat is going to switch to 2.4 kernel (as for me I’d stay with 2.2.14 for a while).
    😉

  2. Hey Alexey,
    I know isn’t it great!
    2001 is bringing so many great features to us… oh wait :).
    Best wishes,
    Grant

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