NirSoft has released AdvancedRun, a free tool for launching programs with custom user, priority, CPU affinity, window size and state, compatibility settings, environment and more.

Whatever settings you define can be used just once, or saved for reuse in shortcuts or scripts.

The highlight feature is probably AdvancedRun’s ability to run a program as another user.

In a click or two you can run a program as SYSTEM, giving it more rights to access files or Registry keys. There are options to run it as the current user, with or without elevation, to run it as an Administrator, even as the owner of some specified process.

Cluttered? Yes, but’ll you” generally tweak one or two settings only – everything else can be ignored

Window-related options allow programs to be launched with a custom state (hidden, maximised, minimised), position or size.

The ability to set process priority and CPU affinity may help to improve performance or reduce a program’s impact on your system.

AdvancedRun can also launch programs with custom Windows compatibility settings, or with a new set of environment variables (a shorter path, maybe, or dropping other variables entirely).

None of this is particularly new, and you can achieve many of the same things by playing around with the advanced properties of shortcuts, or maybe combining them with Windows’ console-based start.exe tool.

AdvancedRun does make this functionality easier to access, though, as well as adding a few extras of its own, and on balance it’s a welcome addition to the NirSoft lineup.

AdvancedRun is a freeware tool available now for Windows XP – 10.