Win XP "run as" to access a protected folder

[Viper]

I am building LabVIEW applications to store test results to a protected folder. Most users will not have access to this folder so they can't delete or change any files stored there. Is it possible to run my application as me even though I'm not logged in ( my testers are logged in under their own accounts) so that my app can save to this folder? I need this permission to be persistant since I don't want to show up every time they have to run it. What are common approaches to this?

[blawson]

You can call runas from the command line and supply your own account name and password.  It's possibly more secure to make a special account for this and give that account permissions to the folder.  So you could make a labview exe to be run from cmd and a launcher exe to perform the runas.

just to clarify, you want to prevent users from accessing the files, or they don't have access and you don't want prompts?

[Viper]

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@blawson wrote:

You can call runas from the command line and supply your own account name and password.  It's possibly more secure to make a special account for this and give that account permissions to the folder.  So you could make a labview exe to be run from cmd and a launcher exe to perform the runas.

just to clarify, you want to prevent users from accessing the files, or they don't have access and you don't want prompts?

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We want to prevent users from accessing the files and I don't want prompts. Typically a operator logs in on their own account and is only logged on for a couple hours at a time and then logs out so that other operators can log into their own accounts and use the PC.

Is it possible that the operators wouldn't know the test account name but would know the password to test for runas. That way they couldn't just log in to get access to the folder? We could hard code in the test account name and prompt for the pass each time its run?

Norm

[blawson]

-unknown account name / known password: I don't see that working, I'm pretty sure that XP lets you see what accounts are on the computer.

Store your data in a SQL database.  SQL server gives you very good access control, allows you to permit programmatic access, and doesn't depend on the OS.

[Viper]

I don't think the account would need to reside on the PC since it's a corporate domain credential that we'ed be using.