Setting Machine-Wide Impersonation Level

The impersonation level, set by the client, determines the amount of authority given to the server to act on the client's behalf. For example, when the client has set its impersonation level to delegate, the server can access local and remote resources as the client, and the server can cloak over multiple machine boundaries if the cloaking capability is set. To help determine which impersonation level you should choose, see Impersonation Levels and Cloaking.

Setting the default impersonation level for the whole machine tells COM what impersonation level to use when a particular client on the machine does not specify an impersonation level programmatically using CoInitializeSecurity or CoSetProxyBlanket.

    To set the impersonation level for a machine:

1. With Dcomcnfg.exe running, choose the Default Properties tab.
2. From the Default Impersonation Level list box, choose the impersonation level you want.
3. If you will be setting more properties for the machine, choose the Apply button to apply the new impersonation level. Otherwise, choose OK to apply the changes and exit Dcomcnfg.exe.