Built-in Administrator not available in Premium?

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I have been totally unsuccessful in accessing the built-in Administrator account in Home Premium. One route I took seemed to suggest that it’s not even included in this version. Do I need to upgrade to Professional, or having I been doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

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The administrator account is there, if you try to create it it will tell you this. The problem with Home Premium, as I just posted in another thread, is that you have no access to Local Users and Groups in Administrative tools, where you would normally make the administrator account available. I saw some fancy registry tricks to enable the account in Home Premium on a google search, not my thing to do, so I do not know if this type of thing will work. As a JMO recourse, I created an “admin” account as I always like to have two accounts available in case one gets locked out with no timeout, as used to happen to me with Vista occasionally. An upgrade to Professional or Ultimate Would solve this.

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The administrator account is there, if you try to create it it will tell you this. The problem with Home Premium, as I just posted in another thread, is that you have no access to Local Users and Groups in Administrative tools, where you would normally make the administrator account available. I saw some fancy registry tricks to enable the account in Home Premium on a google search, not my thing to do, so I do not know if this type of thing will work. As a JMO recourse, I created an “admin” account as I always like to have two accounts available in case one gets locked out with no timeout, as used to happen to me with Vista occasionally. An upgrade to Professional or Ultimate Would solve this.

Its the same thing in win 7 pro

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Its the same thing in win 7 pro

But, according to this you can enable it in the Professional version:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/7539-local-users-groups-manager-open.html

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THANKS!

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It’s disabled and can be enabled via some different methods:

[*]Start an elevated command prompt (right-click a command prompt shortcut and select Run as administrator).
[*]Type: net user administrator /active:yes (Press Enter).
[*]Exit the Command Prompt and Log off to use/see the built-in Administrator account.

If you want to disable the account:

[*]Start an elevated command prompt.
[*]Type: net user administrator /active:no (Press Enter).

But I would save the built-in Administrator account for serious things and keep it disabled; if for some reason there are no other accounts with administrative privileges the Administrator account may become enabled.

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Huge problem with home users having administrator accounts with no password. Most of them get turned into bots.
Having it disabled, at least usually ends up with a real user acct with admin privs…and no easy default to hack.

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I will give it a try. If it works, I will disable, then put your info away for that rainy day. Why I wanted it was to convert my (Administrator) account into a regular account for every-day use, after everything is installed and set up the way I want. I didn’t want another administrator account available because I’d be tempted to switch to it, and then what’s the point of having the regular account?

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I will give it a try. If it works, I will disable, then put your info away for that rainy day. Why I wanted it was to convert my (Administrator) account into a regular account for every-day use, after everything is installed and set up the way I want. I didn’t want another administrator account available because I’d be tempted to switch to it, and then what’s the point of having the regular account?

If your current account gets messed up, how are you going to log in and make the about changes?

You will find that when you boot in to the safe mode there you can log in using the Administrator account.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The following link shows how to with graphics to help you

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/enable-the-hidden-administrator-account-on-windows-vista/

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I have WIN 7 prof and Home Prem and the “Administrators” account was not shown in either. When I tried booting into safe mode (both OS’s) it was still missing. Hence my following the instructions I posted to enable it both OS’s.

After enabling it MAKE SURE THAT YOU PROTECT IT WITH A GOOD STRONG PASSWORD. This should be a mixture of upper & lower case and also numbers.

I know that having this enabled in the past has been a life saver. 

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To the last two replies:

I assumed that memorizing the password to the built-in account would let me get in. Dumb me!! I’d have no way to get in unless I kept that account active all the time. OK. Time to rethink that strategy. THANK YOU!

I use a pass phrase for all my administrative accounts. I was told that that’s much stronger than any combo of letters, numbers, and characters, since no brute force method will know where the spaces should be.

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Ernie, the method you and argus posted looks a lot more reasonable than the registry change fix I saw somewhere. Thanks.

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Is there any way to enable the Administrator account but have it not show on the logo on screen?

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As far as I know, by default no. Once it is enabled it will show at boot-up. You might try looking for a tweaking program that will allow this. Something like TweakUI or similar. MS employees have been good enough in the past to make small programstools (unsupported) that would allow you to do something like that. 

Have a look at the following link for a (free) VISTA tweaker which might work in Win 7. I do not know if this will have the selectiontweak that you are after but it might be worth a try. I got rid of vista within a couple of weeks (I am a glutton for punishment)  due to the fact that my doctor advised me not to get stressed out because my blood pressure was going through the roof   

Remember Make a back-up of your system before using. 

http://www.winvistac…s_Tweaker.html

Let us know if it works for you.

 

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As far as I know, by default no. Once it is enabled it will show at boot-up. You might try looking for a tweaking program that will allow this. Something like TweakUI or similar. MS employees have been good enough in the past to make small programstools (unsupported) that would allow you to do something like that.

Have a look at the following link for a (free) VISTA tweaker which might work in Win 7. I do not know if this will have the selectiontweak that you are after but it might be worth a try. I got rid of vista within a couple of weeks (I am a glutton for punishment) due to the fact that my doctor advised me not to get stressed out because my blood pressure was going through the roof

Remember Make a back-up of your system before using.

http://www.winvistac…s_Tweaker.html

Let us know if it works for you.

Your link does not work. Try Ultimate Windows Tweaker v2, a Tweak UI for Windows 7 & Vista | The Windows Club instead.

Joe

--Joe

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In XP Professional, there is a way to require you to type in the user name as well as the password. It’s a security thing, and they do it on the computers at work. They’ve also disable the showing of the last user, so all you see is 2 empty boxes with wording that tells you what goes in which. I wonder if there’s a tweak like that for Win7?

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From the help screen of Windows 7 searching “Welcome”

What is the Welcome screen?

The Welcome Screen is the screen that you use to log on to Windows. It displays all of the accounts on the computer. You can click your user name instead of having to type it, and you can easily switch to another account with Fast User Switching.

In Windows XP, the Welcome screen could be turned on or off. In this version of Windows, the Welcome Screen can’t be turned off. Fast User Switching is turned on by default.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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 I have it enabled in both Home Premium & Professional. I did this by following the instructions in my previous (first) reply. Here are full instructions that I used to do this:

(Re)-Enable (Hidden) Administrator Account

 

Here’s how to re-enable the account:

1.         Boot into safemode by pressing F8 on bootup.

2.         Log into the Administrator account (this will work since itis safemode).

3.         Go to start –> run and type “controluserpasswords2” without the quotes.

4.         Click on the Advanced tab.

5.         Under “Advanced User Management” click theAdvanced button.

6.         Click on Users.

7.         Right click the Administrator account and select Properties.

8.         Uncheck “Account is disabled”.

9.         Close everything, reboot and enjoy

Or

From within Windows proper byfollowing the instructions from number 3 onwards

After the above restart the computerand log into the (now) visible Admin Acc and create a password. (It might takea few minutes to actually boot into the desktop as it has to create it.

If you follow the link that JoeP posted (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista ) and download the program it has a setting to enable the account. (See my uploaded file photo) 

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