Transferring Administrator Account Profile

ghines · 24 Nov 2015

Hi all,

Upgraded to W10 from W7 several months ago now and activated and used only the built-in Administrator account. Which is what I have done for many years now to stop the UAC popups.

However, I have soon discovered this Administrator account, while blocking the UAC popups has some serious limitations. Like cannot run Edge or any of the Metro Apps. Yes, I have tried the workarounds but they too have issues.

So how can I transferred all my settings for my programs and windows to another local username?

Any suggestions appreciated.

TIA

Greg

AndreyT · 24 Nov 2015

One thing to try might be Windows Enabler utility, which will enable the "Copy to..." button in "Advanced system settings -> User profiles" window. That should let you to copy you entire 'Users\Administrator" folder, thus handing it over to another user profile.

However, I'm not sure if there are any peculiarities in the built-in Administrator account that would prevent this trick from working properly.

bro67 · 24 Nov 2015

By default Microsoft has disabled the Guest & Administrator accounts in Windows 10, in an attempt to protect the OS from users bad habits.

You never want to run as Administrator, because it basically gives free reign to any infection that may attach itself to your OS. A user as an Administrator, just means they are a trusted user, but still will get the UAC prompts as they should, to warn them of possible issues. Most of the times it is because the program is not trusted in Microsoft's license/certificate library.

ghines · 24 Nov 2015

AndreyT said:

One thing to try might be Windows Enabler utility, which will enable the "Copy to..." button in "Advanced system settings -> User profiles" window. That should let you to copy you entire 'Users\Administrator" folder, thus handing it over to another user profile.

However, I'm not sure if there are any peculiarities in the built-in Administrator account that would prevent this trick from working properly.

Thanks for the idea, and WE does copy over the profile but after you login to the new account lots of stuff is not working and I'm getting explorer errors.

Any other ideas appreciated.

TIA

Greg

bro67 · 25 Nov 2015

Create a new account. You cannot do it that way anymore, because 8 & 10 use a roaming profile stored on their servers.

NavyLCDR · 25 Nov 2015

bro67 said:

Create a new account. You cannot do it that way anymore, because 8 & 10 use a roaming profile stored on their servers.

Local account information is not stored on Microsoft servers and the built-in Administrator account is a local account.

bro67 · 25 Nov 2015

NavyLCDR said:

Local account information is not stored on Microsoft servers and the built-in Administrator account is a local account.

We all know that. The Roaming profile will not take if you copy it from one machine to another, because it contains last known info and screws up the profile on Microsoft's servers.

Even before allof this roaming profile crap. Microsoft made it hard to move profile info even then.