Year: 2007

IT folks – ever needed to log in as someone else, but didn’t want to reboot (or log out of) the computer you’re working on? Maybe you’re working on someone’s computer and need to access a shared drive that only admins like you can access. Maybe you’re just lazy and don’t want to wait for an actual logoff.

Whatever the case may be, you can easily accomplish this using Task Manager and the command prompt:

1) Open a command-prompt window.
2) Open Task Manager (if you use CTRL+SHIFT+ESC you’ll need only one hand!)
3) Kill the EXPLORER.EXE process.
4) At the command prompt, type the following:

runas /user:RESOURCE\USERNAME explorer.exe

5) You will be prompted to enter the password for the user. Do so, and Explorer will reopen under that user’s account.

So – for example, you could enter

runas /user:DOMAIN\Administrator explorer.exe

 

or

runas /user:LOCALMACHINE\Administrator explorer.exe

 

to run Explorer as a domain or local administrator.

Remember that this is not a full logoff\login procedure, so the desktop\icons\installed program list won’t change as it would with a standard logoff\login.

One of the neatest features of Outlook 2007 is the ability to share a calendar with anyone. All you have to do is open a new email, enter the recipient and title, then click in the main message box and click Insert > Calendar. If you have more than one calendar, you will be prompted to choose one. You then choose which dates you’d like the calendar to be; you can choose pre-defined terms like “Next Two Weeks” or “Next 30 Days”, or you can choose specific dates. You the choose how much detail you want to include with the Calendar (“Availability Only”, “Limited Details” or “Full Details”). You can then click “Advanced” if you’d like and choose other features, like “Show Private Appointments” (which are hidden by default). You finally click “OK” and Outlook will go to work. Within a few minutes, you’ll see something like this in your email:

Outlook will also attach the calendar as an ICS file that can be imported into many calendaring programs. Even better, if the recipient also has Outlook 2007, he or she can simply click a line in the email’s header to automatically import it as a separate calendar in Outlook itself – no manual importing necessary! You can even use the Overlay view to view the two calendars as one! Niiiiiiiiiccccee!

If you’re in IT support, you’ve probably come across same issues over and over again. These three utilities can take some of the hard work off you and make your IT life a bit easier:

The Offline NT Password Editor – How many times have you gone to work on someone’s computer, only to find that they didn’t know their password because they had auto-login enabled? Or maybe they’ve logged in under their own account for so long that they’ve forgotten the local admin password? It’s not something that happens often, but when it does happen, this handy lil’ app is one of the few ways to reset a password. The Offline NT Password Editor comes as a bootable floppy or CD image; all you do is download the file, transfer it to a floppy or CD, then boot into the tiny Linux distribution that comes with the editor. Everything is driven by a command menu, so there’s no way you can screw this up… mostly. The editor doesn’t natively work on domain controllers (although it can be hacked to do so; I recommend this only at your own peril!). Also, follow the advice of the app’s author and only use the editor to reset the admin password to blank within the editor. Although the password editor has the ability to change a password to almost anything you choose, the author says that you will occasionally run into a problem with doing so. It’s much safer to simply change the password to nothing (i.e. blank) and change it from within Windows.

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