1113231 - unable to run bcdedit on win8 loaner

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations :: RelOps: General, task)

Description

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

I have a windows 8 loaner machine in bug 1112120.  The goal is to run bcdedit and see what some values are.

when I pop up a cmd.exe window, it requires me to have higher privileges.

in trying to launch cmd.exe as administrator, it requires a username/password which I cannot get.

:coop had a good workaround of runas /user:root cmd.exe, this launched a window with root user, but this didn't allow 'bcdedit' to run.

We should be able to get this information from our test machines.

Comment 1

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Q, Mark: is there a proper way to get admin access on the w8 boxes?

Comment 2

[Q]

Well the easiest way is to log in with root credentials via rdp or vnc (will require a switch user action via vnc) However, may I ask  what is the error message and how is bcdedit being invoked?

Comment 3

[Q]

Was able to get it working by right clicking on cmd and selecting "run as administrator" and providing root creds bcdedit works in that elevated privileges window see:

 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
integrityservices       Enable
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {59308483-772a-11e4-8cc1-0025909b6796}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 8
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {1d3e8abd-772b-11e4-b316-0025909b6797}
integrityservices       Enable
recoveryenabled         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {59308483-772a-11e4-8cc1-0025909b6796}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard

C:\windows\system32>

Comment 4

[Q]

I left the window up in the vnc session just in case

Comment 5

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

thanks Q.  My windows-fu is obviously not as seasoned as yours.

Comment 6

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Need anything else here, Joel?

Comment 7

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

Nothing else is needed.  I am confused how Q got the run as administrator stuff to work.  I had tried that, quite possibly there is in user releng/root, maybe there is a better way to avoid the domain.

Comment 8

[Q]

There is a slight difference between running a process as an administrative user and having the UAC (User Access Control) token set to allow "Highest Privileges". Running CMD by right clicking and selecting "run as administrator"( or using UAC commands) starts the application with this token and allows for registry and system edits, etc. There is no releng "root" so when the UAC challenge response pops up I use .\root (the .\ is not usually necessary but a precaution to make sure we use local creds) and provide the password. Since this box is a loaner root uses the same temp loaner password as cltbld. Then it should work.


Q