Administrator account apparently blocked on W10 Home Ed

My laptop, an Acer Spin3, came pre-packaged with Windows 10 Home Edition and had upgrades to version 20H2, Build 19042.867. The current problem is that I cannot log into the Administrator account, which I enabled and am using a strong password. Since I use this password frequently, forgetting it isn't the problem.

I have resisted its nagging me on occasion to let it know my email address or whatnot, favouring a standard username/password pair for logging in. I am not interested in updates "across my devices". After the initial install, I created a joeuser account that accepted a username and password and enabled the Administrator account, which I used to downgrade joeuser to standard priveleges. I would be doing most of my computer work as joeuser (not the real username btw) on this laptop. For some time, there were no real problems, as I had done this on other laptops.

Recently, I had been asked to install drivers under the joeuser account using elevated priveleges, but it wouldn't accept the Administrator password on the only admin account I have. Up until today, this problem comes up any time any elevated priveleges are needed at all. For some of these issues, I could log on to my Administrator account directly (since it would accept my password that way), but as of today, I am not allowed to do that either. I am now effectively blocked from logging in as Administrator in any context.

There had been some major upgrades in the past week, and I am suspicious that this is the problem.

Any suggestions to diagnose and fix the problem are welcome.

Thank you.

Samuria said:

Generally if you right click on the device driver install and schoose run as admin it will work

Nope. Not for me. It asks for my Administrator credentials, and gives me an error that the password is incorrect. I have toyed with the possibility that my password is changed by a virus or a very recent upgrade. Since I run antivirus, I think that possibly the recent upgrade is more likely. But I can't roll back the installation, it seems. But Administrator is still enabled, since it offers me that on my login screen and when I need elevated credentials to run a program or upgrade a driver.

I used to be able to log in as Administrator to address any of these problems, but now I can't log in as Administrator anywhere.

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Fabler2 said:

See option 5 here, Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10 | Tutorials (tenforums.com)
Then you should be able to change the ordinary admin account's password.

I actually don't have an ordinary Admin account; just the root Administrator account. The joeuser account has standard priveleges, not admin. I have no issues with joeuser.
I have tried option 5 out, and found that the first column of line 00000038 actually was "10". Not surprising, since I can see Administrator (the root account) offered as a login. The problem is that it is not accepting my password.
Now if set the bit to "11", it will disable Administrator, which is the only account with admin priveleges. Doesn't seem like a choice.
Paul