How to runas an application requiring elevation with a different user?

Question

I want to run regedit as a different user (i.e. to edit that user's registry entries).

So I've run cmd as an Administrator, then did

runas /profile /savecred /user:OtherUserName regedit

It asks for my password but after I type it in, I get

RUNAS ERROR: Unable to run - regedit

740: The requested operation requires elevation.

I understand that regedit has to be run as an administrator, but I am running the command prompt as administrator. OtherUserName is an Administrator type user.

I'm guessing that even though I'm running for the current user as administrator, my acceptance of that doesn't pass over to OtherUserName.

But this is something I am able to do in Windows 7 Embedded.

I've tried:

• Group Policy - "Behavior of the elevation prompt for Administrators" - both Prompt for Credentials and Elevate without Prompting

• The upvoted answer here - Windows 10 pro, after anniversary update I can't use "runas administrator shortcut" anymore (runas /profile /savecred /user:administrator "cmd.exe" first, but with the current username instead of administrator).

-

Answer 1

OK so I believe I've found a way around it, thanks to this page... https://www.itechtics.com/edit-registry-settings-other-users/

reg load HKU\OtherUserName C:\Users\OtherUserName \ntuser.dat

then

regedit

then there is a node

[HKEY_USERS\OtherUserName\...etc.]

in the registry settings.

It solves the problem for me, though it still doesn't answer the overall question of why I can't runas an application requiring elevated permissions...

Answer 2

It is working when used with cmd:

runas /user:domain\login "cmd /c ^c:\windows\regedit.exe^"

runas error 740: The requested operation requires elevation and cmd /c? - Windows Forum