It's a good security practice for administrators to logon with a user account that is not a member of the administrators group, because viruses and worms (and hackers) can take advantage of the fact that you're logged on as an administrator. However, sometimes you need to be an administrator to carry out some specific tasks. Wouldn't it be nice if you could run a task as an administrator without having to logout and log back on again? You can! It's called secondary logon and here's how to use it:

1. Log on to the computer with an account that is not an administrator.
2. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
3. Switch to Classic View.
4. Right click the Power Options icon. Notice that you have two options: Open and Create Shortcut. Press the Esc key on the keyboard to close the menu.
5. Hold down the SHIFT key on the keyboard. With the SHIFT key held down, right click the Power Options icon. Click the Run as command.
6. In the Run As dialog box, select the The following user option. Click the down arrow in the drop down list box and select a user that is an administrator. Type in the account's password and then click OK. Note that this won't work if the account you want to use doesn't have a password.
7. Bingo! The Power Options Properties dialog box opens under the authority (or "context") of the administrator account you specified.

We used the Power Options applet as an example, but you can use the Run as command with any executable program. Right click a program name in the Start menu or a program file in Explorer and you'll see the Run as option.