Enable local administrator vista

Double-click the Computer Management item to open it. Authorize UAC by clicking the Continue button. Double-click "Local Users and Groups" to open it. Click the Users folder. On the right side of Computer Management, you should see icons for all of the user accounts created on your computer. The ones that have small red circles with an "X" through them are disabled. Click to select the Administrator icon, and then right-click it to open its context menu and choose Properties.

You'll need to restart your computer and follow one of the following two methods to access Administrator. For this method, you press F8 as Windows is starting up when the character mode part of the boot-up says something to the effect of "Starting Windows. Once the boot menu is showing, paused for your operating system selection, use the arrow or tab keys to select "Microsoft Windows" the option that runs Windows Vista. Don't press Enter; instead, press the F8 key, and you'll progress to the Safe Mode boot screen.

Choose the first option, "Safe Mode" and press Enter. After a time, Vista will show you the log-in screen with two options, Administrator and Other User. Click the Administrator icon. Running Safe Mode as Administrator both limits and extends your privileges. But for quick access to the Administrator account, this is about as good as it gets in Vista Beta 2.

The second method allows you to log into the Administrator account just as you would any normal account. So you get the full-fledged Administrator privileges in a normal boot mode, not Safe Mode. There's a trick you need to know to make it work. And also something you need to watch out for.

Start by enabling the Administrator account in Computer Management just as described above. Remember: Don't set a password in Computer Management for the Administrator account.

The second step -- the trick -- is to disable any other enabled accounts with computer administrator privileges in the Users area. Look for account icons that lack the red disable mark. You should find at least one with computer administrator privileges.

Follow the same steps to open Properties, but this time, click to add a check mark in the box labeled "Account Is Disabled. Of course you can change these setting also for all other administrator accounts by disabling UAC through the User accounts applet in the Control Panel or by disabling the policy " Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode ".

Note that this doesn't just disable the UAC prompts like if you set the policy " Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode " to "Elevate without prompting". It disables UAC altogether, which basically means that every program an administrator launches will be elevated automatically. You can test this if you save a file with notepad in the Windows folder. If UAC is enabled you can't do that if you didn't elevate notepad before.

Thus the main difference between the built-in Administrator account and all other admins is that every program will run with elevated privileges. Since these default settings can be changed for the built-in admin account and the other administrator accounts there are no super secret powers involved here.

Another myth is that every time you launch a program with admin privileges it runs under the built-in Administrator account. The fact that you can use this function even if the local Administrator account is disabled should make it clear that there is no such connection between the two. You also can't launch a program under the local Administrator account using the runas command line tool if this account is disabled.

Perhaps the term "run as administrator" is a bit misleading. What this function really does is to run programs with elevated privileges or more precisely at the high integrity level , which can be done by every account that is a member of the Administrators group.

Another difference to other accounts is that the local Administrator account can't be deleted. Moreover, you can't remove this account from the built-in Administrators group. However, as noted above, it can be disabled which is the case by default. It is also possible to rename the local Administrator account.

There are some legacy applications that can only be installed or run using the built-in Administrator account. I haven't encountered such an application for a while. As far as I know, this behavior has nothing to do with special capabilities of the local Administrator account; it is just a matter of bad programming. If you rename the built-in Administrator account and create a new one called "Administrator" these programs will just use this new account. Basically the super powers of the Administrator account boil down to the differences with regard to the default UAC settings.

Please, tell me if I am wrong. By the way, Vista really has this super powerful account, just that it is not the built-in Administrator.

It is the TrustedInstaller service Windows Module Installer service , which can modify everything on a Vista machine, in particular system files. However, that is the topic of another story.

Subscribe to 4sysops newsletter! Want to write for 4sysops? We are looking for new authors. Read 4sysops without ads and for free by becoming a member! The Privileged Access Workstation PAW is an approach to identity management that involves total separation of computing and account Credential Guard in Windows Server allows you to protect in-memory credentials.

This post explains how Credential Guard works If you log on with the built-in administrator account or a domain administrator account on a Windows 10 computer, He has more than In Windows , the admin account was the default. On domain members the built-in admin account is not disabled. I tried downloading a free copy to reset pass words now I cant get that computer to work and its a special nuilt Dell to run our printers, for our printing company.

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Boot Into Safe Mode.