"...can't be opened using built-in Administrator account."

Darkstrike · 29 Jan 2016

Hi all,

Working on a Win10 touchscreen desktop for a friend who just got scammed by one those fake "call this number, your computer is infected" ads. She foolishly let somebody from Indian remote into her computer and install some fake "weather" software which just caused many fake error messages to appear on boot and every so often to trick you into paying them.

That all being said, I've cleaned all the Malware off of it and everything is back to normal EXCEPT...

Half the programs "including her sound functionality/volume control applet in the system tray" won't start or load and install all just give a "...can't be opened using built-in Administrator account." error....

Is there any way to fix this? Everything worked fine before, and the computer only has one user account set as Administrator....?

Thanks for any help!

NavyLCDR · 29 Jan 2016

I would create another user account set as administrator and see if the problem carries over to the new account. If it does, I would say it is time for a clean install.

dalchina · 29 Jan 2016

Hello, one can only guess at what damage may have been done, and whether it's safe to proceed with such a system at all.

I assume your friend hasn't learnt the need to use disk imaging yet (else you would simply have restored an image created prior to the infestation). That lesson, sadly, is often learnt after some nasty event.

Personally what I'd do is to make a disk image of the system disk, so you can recover whatever personal data you need later.

Then do a complete clean install.
Reinstall programs
Recover data from the disk image.

I would not recommend trying any sort of repair- you could just end up wasting time and be left with an unreliable device.

Mystere · 29 Jan 2016

Darkstrike said:

Half the programs "including her sound functionality/volume control applet in the system tray" won't start or load and install all just give a "...can't be opened using built-in Administrator account." error....

Is there any way to fix this? Everything worked fine before, and the computer only has one user account set as Administrator....?

There is a difference between THE administrator account, and a user account that is set to be an administrator. If you are using the built-in administrator, then it's true. You can't use those tools using that account.

If it's a regular user, then perhaps UAC has been disabled. In which case, you can enable UAC (there are guides in the tutorials section of the site).