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#40
You're most welcome Dorian. I'm glad the tutorials could help. :)
And now to thank you once again for a great guide as always as well as stopping to share one finding here regarding the screens in Step 2 and Step 6 in Option Two.
I had to delay the catch with the snipping tool in order to catch both screens in the act of first in Step 2 getting into the user groups and unchecking the box to not only enable the hidden admin account but to provide the full name for it. For security reasons random name changes can help prevent any negative consequences from having it enabled and someone finding out just what name the hidden admin uses.
The other screen captures shows the need to use the right click to rename option when going to rename the account in addition to the rename on the line in the screen followed by clicking on the apply button. A fast right click on the Start button to select the Control Panel followed by opening the Administrative tools as outlined in Option Two saves a whole world of time if and when you decide to rename it.
Still need to work on that other item regarding taking ownership but wanted you to see that there is a little room even with the built in account for a little customization? :)
At first when going to make the effort I ended up back over at SF for the local security policy editor references as well as trying the command prompt option and found that nothing would happen with the msc commands first realizing I was still on the 10 Home not Pro VM?
Then when going to retrace the initial steps that did see results the interesting thing was finding out I was already right there in the first place for taking care of two things rather then making two trips. The main just saw the default admin come to life for seeing what can done on a physical install rather then just on a VM since I have four drives full of files to try and take ownership over as well as how many of the programs will be available there. The VMs looked rather blank until opening the AllApps up for a look!
I was experiencing the same problem as offpath, in that enabling the built-in administrator (from the command prompt at boot) wasn't actually doing anything. I hunted around online and found a neat trick on superuser.com that switches the "Accessibility Options" button on the login screen to a command prompt button... The process is as follows:
That command prompt will allow you to add a password to the built-in administrator account and consequently log in. Once there you can add a new user to the machine (with admin privileges).you need to have the Windows (7|8|8.1) install media available.
- Start your PC off the (Disk|USB|HDD) that contains the install media
- Once loaded, press Shift+F10. This will open a command prompt
- Run the following commands in order:
diskpart
list vol
- Once you find the right volume (your C: drive (it may have a different drive letter)), run exit
- Now, run D: where D is your drive letter.
- Run cd \Windows\System32
- Run ren Utilman.exe Utilman_old.exe
- Run copy cmd.exe Utilman.exe
- Reboot
Once you get to the logon screen, click the Accessibility Options icon. Once the Command Prompt opens, run these commands, replacing user_to_change with the user you want to reset the password of:
net user user_to_change *
Enter a new password, enter it again (you won't see it) and log in. You can now go back to C:\Windows\System32 and delete the Utilman.exe that we made, and rename Utilman_old.exe to Utilman.exe
Josh
I have used the Administrator account quite successfully to install Windows Features when I could not as an ordinary user (even one with Administrator priveleges). Thanks!
please i need help!
i activated the hidden acount with no problems
but now i want to delete it so i dont need to put passwords every time i try to download something
the problem is though that to login to admin it needs a password
but i have no idea what it is? how do i fix it? need help asap
Hello! Thanks for this great guide. I activated the Administrator account to make some changes to my personal account, and after that I disabled it with the /active:no command. But my C:\Users folder now appears a 'Administrator' folder, which I think it wasn't there in the first place. Is there any way I can make it disappear?
Hello kunkun, :)
This is normal. When you first sign in to an account, a user profile folder is created for it in the C:\Users folder. In this case, the "C:\Users\Administrator" profile folder for the built-in "Administrator" account.
If you like, you can safely delete the "C:\Users\Administrator" folder since you disabled the account. This will basically reset the account back to default.