How to run a command on a remote Windows system as a non-admin user with WMI?

Question

I have a script written in Visual Basic that starts a process (given to the script as an argument) on a remote system (again, given as an argument) using WMI. This script works fine when using an Administrator account on the remote system, but when using a non-administrator account, I get the following error:

ConnectServer Failed w/ (-2147024891) Access is denied.

I'd like to be able to run processes on remote systems as a non-administrator user with this script, and I'm pretty sure the problem is due to security settings on the remote system, but I've not been able to reset the right ones.

Answer 1

It sounds like you need to configure launch and activation permissions for this user, on the target machine, via DCOMCNFG. By default non-admin users do not have remote launch and activiation permissions. Alternatively, depending on the operating system you are connecting to, there may be a "Distributed COM Users" group to which you can add your user. This group already has the appropriate permissions. You can read more about WMI and DCOM permissions here.