Admin override on windows 7+

slinxy · 7 Jul 2016 at 00:06

Hi

It's been a while since I've used windows, in the odd days of xp an admin account can override a normal account and with there details and log in to the same session to make the changes that are needed to that normal account.

I'm pretty sure I used to be able to do it on windows 7 as well, but it's been over 3 years since I've had to do any major admin work on a windows machine.. and my memory is really bad.

Is it possible? if so how? Thanks in advance.

Six6siX · 7 Jul 2016 at 08:30

Right Click > Run as Administrator?

What exactly are you trying to do?

slinxy · 7 Jul 2016 at 08:57

when an user locks their machine (win + l) so that they can go to lunch or something and you need to login in their actual account, with your admin username and password rather than switch users.

In times when you need to make changes to their proile settings like changing the email server settings.

IT Troll · 8 Jul 2016 at 01:34

No you cannot login to someone's session using other user credentials. An admin can force an unlock but this logs the user out. Some third party remote assistance tools will however allow you to take unsolicited remote control of a user's desktop.

For other admin tasks you have a wide variety of methods available; admin shares for file access, remote registry editing, group policy, scripts, etc.

asim18 · 8 Jul 2016 at 02:08

I think you need to login as the admin, then go to task manager and under the "users" tab and you will see the other account as "disconnected" or something. Right click it and click remote control or something.

I think this might only work on terminal servers.

bledd · 8 Jul 2016 at 08:09

I don't recall XP being able to do what you've said.