Interactive command line as a NETWORK service

Question

How to open an interactive application such as cmd.exe or Windows Explorer running as a NETWORK SERVICE? There are ways to do this for the SYSTEM account, but NETWORK SERVICE proves to be a problem. I need this to work on Windows 7, but it would be interesting to also use solutions for other versions of Windows.

Answer 1

Have you tried PsExec, a couple of interesting links with additional information:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx
• https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/381df759-af7f-4523-a2fd-b17e8c68db9e/how-to-start-cmdexe-as-network-service?forum=pstools

Answer 2

Here is how you could use PsExec to run cmd.exe in the context of the user "NETWORK SERVICE":

psexec -i -u "nt authority\network service" cmd.exe