Runas Command Does Not Work with UPN Name

After you install Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, the runas command may not work correctly (whether you use the command from a command prompt or in a script).

If you use a user principal name (UPN) name, such as, name@company.com, the program starts successfully, but when the program initializes you may receive the following error message: If you use "plain" user names, the behavior on standalone computers is the same as for UPN names. On domain members and domain controllers, the runas command generates the following error message: You may experience these issues with tools such as Ntbackup.exe or Mmc.exe that are used by administrative consoles.

The runas command uses the TranslateName function to convert the user name syntax to the domain\user syntax if necessary. The value that is returned from the TranslateName function is used to grant desktop access to the user. If this does not work, the user does not have access to the desktop and the program does not start.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

To work around this problem, you can use the domain\user syntax for both UPN names and plain user names. On standalone computers or when you want to use a local account on a domain member, use the computer name as the security principal. For UPN names, use the down-level domain name and the down-level user name.

For domain members and domain controllers, the supported formats for user names are domainname\username and UPN name. 'Plain' names are not supported in this configuration if the intent is to run Runas with domain credentials.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 2.