Unix-like user switching on Windows XP Pro?

Question

As a developer I frequently need to do administrative things like install software or start and stop services. However, I prefer to do my daily work on a limited account. Under unix, this wasn't such a problem because a login was a light-weight thing - 10 seconds and all my software still runs quickly. I would log in and log out as needed 20-30 times a day. But under XP, a switch-users or a log-out/log-in seems to take forever. And when I have multiple sessions open it substantially reduces the memory available on my machine.

As a stopgap measure, right-click->run-as will work in some instances - but there are some operations I haven't been able to perform.

My question is: is there a way I can quickly elevate my privilege level and then lower it again as I was used to doing under Unix.

Answer 1

nope, sudo is not available on windows..:(

Answer 2

Maybe you are speaking about the "Fast User Switching" function. The problem with that is that using this will not work if your computer is part of a domain.



If you are part of a domain, as a possibility, you could remove the workstation from the domain, enable the switching, and create a VPN or other connection back to the domain.



Edit: Fast User Switching will be available at the domain level in Vista, so you could also upgrade.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Not really, Windows is too much of a pain to change privileges to consider doing it frequently.

Vista? (play theme music from the shower scene in psycho) now that would be a big trade off !

Vista is about the worst at everything.

Sorry, I can't think of an easy solution for that.

Answer 5

Yes, there is a way. XP has a "run as" command.

However, remember that XP is going to be a giant pain in the neck for several reasons, and you may want to go back to Linux/Unix, especially Kubuntu, maybe with WINE, which is a Windows emmulator. With Kubuntu Live, you can run it LIVE from your CDrom drive, and try it to see if you like it before installing it on your hard drive. www.kubuntu.org. Of course, an operating system running off your CDrom drive is going to be slower than one running on your hard drive, if you choose to try the live version free, of course.