Active Directory 'Run As' Problem

Active Directory Users and Computers - 'Run As' not working

I recently had to move to using two different domain accounts at work. This was to downgrade the login account I use to a simple user, and keep a separate admin account for when I need it.

As you can imagine this has been a bit of an adjustment from running as a domain admin all the time. Still security is a priority so what the hell.

My normal way of getting around this inconvenience is to use the "Run As" option when starting a program. That way I can run a program as the domain admin account when I need to. That was working well until I tried to use the

Active Directory Users and Computers

mmc snap-in that comes with the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack.

The shortcut for this snap-in resides in the Administrative Tools section of my start menu. Viewing the Advanced properties of this shortcut showed that the checkbox

Run with different credentials

was greyed out. The other option was to hold down the shift key and right click the shortcut to get the "Run As" option. That seemed to work but after providing my account details the app failed to launch.

In the end the solution was to create my own shortcut to the c:\windows\system32\dsa.msc file. That seemed to work OK.

I'm not sure if this was due to my upgrading the Admin Tools Pack or it was due to a Windows XP security update but it was frustrating for a while.

p.s. I know this was done by Microsoft for a reason and you shouldn't really use "Run As" with these tools. The best option would be to give my simple user account the basic rights it would need to use Active Directories. Unfortunately that is not possible with the current set up at work.

Creative Zen Touch Firmware Problem

I hadn't used my Creative Zen Touch MP3 player for a while. It is a lovely machine but it had been gathering dust while I neglected music. Last week my partner decided that she wanted to use it while on holiday. When she attempted to add some new music to it she found that it would not talk to our PC.

I had changed to Vista since the last time I synched with the Zen, so it was assumed that this was the problem. After some research it appeared that the firmware would have to be upgraded on the player before it would talk to Vista. Unfortunately the firmware would have to be upgraded from a PC that could talk to the player.

I have an XP laptop that I could use for this so it shouldn't be a problem. Well that's the theory anyway. Unfortunately as it turns out the problem is not Vista, it is Media Player 11. Even though my XP laptop would talk to the Zen, because I had upgraded to Media Player 11 the firmware upgrade failed.

This left me with an MP3 player that stuck in Recovery Mode. I tried all the options on the player but basically it had no firmware anymore and was a complete loss. There is an option in recovery mode that allows you to delete the current firmware and reload it from a PC. That sounds fine but the firmware upgrade that I got from the Creative website would no longer recognise that the player existed. It seems that once the firmware upgrade application had deleted the current firmware and then rebooted the Zen, a PC with Media Player 11 would not be able to recognise the player so the new firmware could be applied.

I did some more research and found a lot of conflicting information. What worked for me though was rolling back Media Player 11 to Media Player 10, then the firmware upgrade application could recognise the player and install the new firmware.

I read in a few places that the roll-back to Media Player 10 did not fix this problem, however rolling-back to version 10 is not straight forward so these people probably did not do it correctly. I never run with System Restore turned on, but I suppose if you do then you might be able to roll-back to version 10 using that method, although who knows what else you would lose. These are the steps I followed:

1. Unplug the MP3 player from the PC.


2. Open Control Panel.


3. Start Add or Remove Programs.


4. Find Windows Media Player 11, and then remove it.


5. Allow the roll-back routine to finish and then reboot.


6. Start Add or Remove Programs again.


7. Find Windows Media Format 11 Runtime, and then remove it.


8. Reboot again.


9. Start Add or Remove Programs again.


10. Find Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework Feature Pack 1.5, and then remove it.


11. In Add or Remove Programs tick the box at the top labelled Show Updates.


12. Look through all of the updates that appear and remove any that refer to Media Player 11. I think I found about 3 updates.


13. Reboot


14. Run the Firmware upgrade application available from the Creative website support section.


15. Reinstall Media Player 11 - because it is pretty cool.


16. Tell your partner that you have fixed it and receive smiles and/or hugs.

This advice is provided, as is, follow it if you want I take no responsibility. Creative would probably tell you to return the player to them. Even if it is not in warranty I'm sure that they would fix a firmware issue.