Runas Command – Running Windows Explorer in Windows 7

runaswindows 7windows-explorer

I'm having a strange issue with Windows Explorer on Windows 7 Professional.

When I try to open it up under different user credentials, I get the following error message:

Windows Cannot access the specified device,path...

The results are the same whether I try it from the context menu or by using runas /user:DOMAIN\User explorer.exe

However, if I open up a Command Prompt (using runas.exe) the behavior is a bit different:

  • Typing in just explorer or explorer.exe results in the same error.
  • Typing in explorer C: or explorer /E,... doesn't run anything. I'm dropped right back to the prompt. The Explorer process doesn't start.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? If so, how can I go about changing it?

Best Answer

First of all, thank you everyone for the responses.

An update on this. If I make the target domain user a local administrator, I'm able to start Explorer with runas command. However, the new instance of explorer does not start under a different user's credentials.

Apparently, starting with Vista, MS no longer allows multiple instances of explorer.exe with different credentials. It was mentioned here

Anyway, I'm officially giving up on it and looking for a standalone explorer replacement which can be run with RunAs.

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