RunAss
Advanced programmers, system administrators or geek users often need to run an application under the Local System account. You might use the built-in at command with option /INTERACTIVE. But in Vista, this option no longer works. Also using at command is a bit clumsy. I wrote a tool that is capable of doing that in both pre-Vista system and in Vista.
If you run this tool in Windows XP or older, it launches the application using the Scheduler service, just like the at command does, with a little more comfortability. The NetScheduleJobAdd API function is key to this. The Scheduler service works at precision of 1 minute, so you might need to wait some time until your application is executed.
Support of interactive services in Windows Vista has been disabled due to various security vulnerabilities, like shatter attack. I was looking for a way how to do it, and found that applications are allowed to "steal" process token of Winlogon.exe. This was not possible before, as the DACL of processes running under LocalSystem account prevented access to the process token. If RunAss detects it runs on Vista, it will launch the desired application this way.
To run an application, use the following syntax:
RunAss.exe ApplicationToRun Parameters
Example:
RunAss.exe C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c C:\Windows\Regedit.exe
RunAss.exe will work on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista.