Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

12.11. Impersonate a Windows User

Problem

You need your code to run in the context of a Windows user other than the currently active user account.

Solution

Obtain a System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity object representing the Windows user you need to impersonate, and then call the Impersonate method of the WindowsIdentity object.

How It Works

Every Windows thread has an associated access token, which represents the Windows account on whose behalf the thread is running. The Windows operating system uses the access token to determine whether a thread has the appropriate permissions to perform protected operations on behalf of the account, such as read and write files, reboot the system, and change the system time.

By default, a managed application ...