Windows – Can’t run File Explorer as different user

user-accountswindowswindows 10windows-explorer

Following on from this question about opening file explorer as a different user, I've tried navigating to C:\Windows, shift+right-clicking explorer.exe and clicking "Run as different user". When I enter the login details of the user, I get 2 successive error messages, both of which say

Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item

If I try the login details of the account that's currently logged in, it works, but the other doesn't. This is the case for both accounts (admins) on my PC.

Edit

There has been some confusion in the comments. I'm trying to follow the accepted answer in the question linked above, and it's not working. Some people are saying it can't be done, so it's odd that there is an accepted answer with 3 upvotes

Best Answer

Per this TechNet Blog Post, explorer.exe looks to be single threaded and won't allow multiple threads running under different user accounts:

Windows Explorer was not designed to run in multiple security contexts in the same desktop session, Windows cannot simply throw up a UAC prompt and then launch an elevated instance of Explorer

The most useful alternative to using explorer.exe, as also outlined in that article, is to download explorer++ and run that as the user you wish to browse files as. You can connect to UNC paths just as easily in explorer++ as you would with explorer, so it seems to be a sufficient alternative. This is also the easiest approach I've come across that doesn't require elevated permissions (such as those needed to meddle in the registry or install additional software).

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