Running Internet Explorer with “Run as” fails to open a new PDF window

Question

First things first.

This application is an ASP.NET application using windows authentication.

Situation: The user is logged onto their computer with something like Domain1\\John and is running Internet Explorer 7 as Domain2\\Mike using the "Run As" option. Domain1 is the user's local domain. He is accessing the application over the Internet using the Domain2\\Mike credentials where Domain2 is the domain that IIS knows about.

I'm opening a new browser page with Javascript, and the window contains a PDF report; the problem is that it is not showing correctly. It shows a gray screen, without even the Adobe reader toolbar.

On the other hand, when IE is run as Domain1\\John everything works nicely. I think it has something with the local computer rights. I added Domain2\\Mike to the Administrator group on the local computer, but it still fails to open the new page correctly.

Any help is very appreciated.

Answer 1

1. Your window open code may be the problem. Try linking directly to the pdf and see how that behaves.
2. Your server may not be configured to serve PDF (though it probably is).
3. What are the permissions set on the pdf file? If the PDF is on a remote machine, adding the user to the local administrators group is unlikely to have any effect.

It might help if you posted the window.open code.

Answer 2

It is about new feature of Adobe Reader X, called protected mode. Fabulous new feature that we couldn't live without. Yes we need more protection to read PDF files.

Option Enable protected mode on startup must be deselected for Domain2\\Mike, user used to run IE. Popup with PDF will open. Also instaling Adobe Reader 9 will fix the issue, because it does not ows fabulous feature or it maybe does but it isn't turned on by default.

Hope this will help someone experiencing similar problem with this new Abode feature :)