Starting Internet Explorer as a different user

"It's to test how a web site behaves
when logged in as a different user.

So actually you don't really need to run IE as a different user, you just need to log into the website as a different user?

(Instructions below were written looking at IE7 as I haven't got 8 handy here right now, but the relevant dialogs haven't changed significantly since IE5 as far as I can remember)

The easiest way to do this would be to just go into Internet Options -> Security. Then click on the icon for the zone that your website(s) are being detected as (it should show you which zone you're in on IE's status bar if you don't know) click Custom Level and scroll right to the bottom of the list.

You should see a section headed User Authentication -> Logon just select the Prompt for user name and password option, and you should then be prompted for which account you want to use the first time that you visit the website per session."

"Anyhow, does runas work for other processes under that specific login? IE7+ generally do not like runas and it's not even supported under Vista+ what I know (not sure why but I'd guess it has with restricted mode to do - it pops up a dialog stating this when I try).

Enabling Explorer in general to launch each folder in a separate process might be related to your problem as iexplore might be part of the shell and if this option isn't enabled new instances will not be launched in a separate process?

Some tricks to test stuff out is doing runas for ""cmd"" and then launch whatever from the spawned cmd - processes from that one will generally inherit its owner. Or try giving an argument to IE like an url and try the runas /user:foo ""start http://stackoverflow.com"" for default browser launch..."

"It's to test how a web site behaves when logged in as a different user.

So it's basically to test the web site, not the computer?

Then unless you're using Windows authentication, it might be much easier to add dummy domains to your hosts file, to allow for creating another browser session. For that, and other options, see How to Log Into a Web App Simultaneously with Different Account?"

You could also hold down the SHIFT key and right-click on the Internet Explorer shortcut, then select the option to run as a different user.

"for me resetting the IE setting resolved my problem.

just note that delete personal setting is not required and the user continue to run right after

I really mean it"