As a domain member, ‘run with administrative privileges’ always asks for hostname

permissionsrunaswindows 7

Since we run Windows 7-clients in our windows-server domain I have a specific use case that has become more inconvenient:

On the client-site, being logged-on as an user with restricted rights and having the user account control (UAC) activated on the highest level, you can run an application with administrative privileges by right-clicking onto it and choosing “Run as administrator”.

After that, a popup window is shown and asks for the username and password.

As a domain member you now have to enter your full hostname with a backslash following and the user name with administrative privileges (e.g. Administrator) in order to authenticate as local administrator.
On XP-machines you simply had to type in “Administrator” for the username.

That makes administration more inconvenient if you run various Windows-7 clients in a company, because you always have to lookup the hostname for the machine on which you want to run something with administrative privileges.

Is there a registry setting or a good workaround that lets you authenticate as administrator without having to enter the hostname for the machine, but not using tools like "RunAsSPC" or "Steel RunAs"?

Best Answer

I put the same question on SuperUser.com and I got an answer:

When you want to authenticate to the local computer, you can use a dot instead of the hostname. This doesn't make the issue go away entirely, but at least it prevents you from having to look up hostnames since . works everywhere.

Username: .\Administrator
Password: * * * * * * *

In certain contexts, localhost will work instead. I haven't yet found a situation where either . or localhost doesn't work, but I'm sure there is one somewhere.

Stephen Jennings

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