---
title: "Logon as a different user on the same local desktop: in win 2003"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/8/logon-as-a-different-user-on-the-same-local-desktop-in-win-2.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/8/logon-as-a-different-user-on-the-same-local-desktop-in-win-2.html"
published: "2005-06-08T07:38:00"
updated: "2005-06-08T07:38:00"
tags: ["Tips & Tricks"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Windows XP has a nice feature where you can log on multiple times as different users concurrently, while at the same machine (switch user). It's a nice feature if you want to test your application as a lower privilege…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Logon as a different user on the same local desktop: in win 2003

By Roy Osherove June 8, 2005 In [Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 8, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

Windows XP has a nice feature where you can log on multiple times as different users concurrently, while at the same machine (switch user). It's a nice feature if you want to test your application as a lower privilege user, for example (or you could just use "RunAs"..)

Windows Server 2003 does not have this (It's a server, is that a good enough reason? not sure..) but you can emulate this behavior by doing a remote desktop connection to the local machine:

press start-Run, type "mstsc" and type the name of the local machine in the dialog box. you can then log on as whoever you want while running as the original user.

I know - simple, but I just figured this out today...

## More in Tips & Tricks

[All posts in Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

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- Jun 8, 2005

    ### [Cool Resharper hidden gem](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/8/cool-resharper-hidden-gem.html)

- Apr 20, 2005

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- Mar 19, 2005

    ### [How to use virtual PC and still save lots of room: differencing disks](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/19/how-to-use-virtual-pc-and-still-save-lots-of-room-differenci.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/