How to execute 2 commands inside a single runas?

Question

1. When executed independently, they execute perfectly.
2. When executed in 2 consecutive runas statements, chrome.exe is executed before robocopy has had a chance to finish.
3. When placed inside a single runas separated by a &, it will not execute properly. Why?

 runas /savecred /user:chrome "robocopy C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome-Backup C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome /mir & \"!ProgramFiles(x86)!\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe\""

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, runas will only take one command.

You can, however, work around this by making a batch file of your multiple commands, and then using runas to execute your batch file. Like this:

REM This file is CopyChromeStuffAndRunIt.bat

robocopy "C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome-Backup" "C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome" /mir
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe\"

Then run your command:

runas /savecred /user:chrome "c:\batFileLocation\CopyChromeStuffAndRunIt.bat"

Alternatively, instead of running your command from the command line, you could put the runas command in another, separate batch file, so that you end up with two batch files.

Answer 2

Your first idea to use the & to stick two commands together is the right way.

Use this sticked command and put it on a cmd like follows:

Runas /savecred /user:chrome "cmd /c ""robocopy C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome-Backup C:\Users\chrome\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome /mir & \"!ProgramFiles(x86)!\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe\"""

This allows you to execute more than one command in one runas statement without using batch files.