Runas

'Runas' allows a user to run specific tools and programs with different permissions than the user's current logon provides.

Scenario:
Your happily busy supporting a client ‘contoso’ from a remote location using a local VM that mimics most of their environment, along with an active VPN connection to be able to make the required network calls to the backend system while actively debugging.

This works fine in most cases for example interfacing with contoso's TFS, SQL, ect.
However I was faced with a bit of a predicament where the VM in question was not on contoso’s domain so the instance of VS was running under the local admin account and not my contoso AD account. This resulted in the one call going via a com+ proxy to use my local creds even thow its set to impersonate user X. After a LONG struggle of trying to jump throw the one hoop after the other I found myself running face first into the one wall after the other till I found this handy little parameter for the runas command… /netonly Indicating that the user information specified is for remote access only and so doing I could open VS and continue solving the issue at hand. :)

Happy coding

Syntax:

runas [{/profile|/noprofile}]
[/env]
[/netonly]
[/smartcard]
[/showtrustlevels]
[/trustlevel]
/user:UserAccountName program

Example:

runas /netonly /user:contoso\petri.malherbe 
"C:\Program Files (x86)\...\IDE\devenv.exe"

Parameters:

/profile	Loads the user's profile. /profile is the default.
/no profile	Specifies that the user's profile is not to be loaded. This allows the application to load more quickly, but it can also cause a malfunction in some applications.
/env	Specifies that the current network environment be used instead of the user's local environment.
/netonly	Indicates that the user information specified is for remote access only.
/smartcard	Indicates whether the credentials are to be supplied from a smartcard.
/showtrustlevels	Lists the /trustlevel options.
/trustlevel	Specifies the level of authorization at which the application is to run. Use /showtrustlevels to see the trust levels available.
/user:UserAccountName	Specifies the name of the user account under which to run the program. The user account format should be user@domain or Domain\User.
program	Specifies the program or command to run using the account specified in /user.
/?	Displays help at the command prompt.

Microsoft Remarks:
It is good practice for administrators to use an account with restrictive permissions to perform routine, nonadministrative tasks, and to use an account with broader permissions only when performing specific administrative tasks. To accomplish this without logging off and back on, log on with a regular user account, and then use the runas command to run the tools that require the broader permissions.