Administrator account in vista

On the low-res Windows Welcome screen, choose the Administrator account, which by default has no password. After a time, Vista will show you the log-in screen with two options, Administrator and Other User. Click the Administrator icon. You should see a message stating that the command completed successfully. In the Administrator: Command Prompt window, type net user and then press the Enter key. In Windows Vista there is a hidden account called Administrator which does not show up on the login screen but it is always available for use if required.

Type netplwiz into the Run bar and hit Enter. Select the User account you are using under the User tab. Log in as Administrator from Safe mode. Close Computer Management and restart Windows. When it comes back up, it will just load the Administrator account, since you haven't set a password. For security reasons, this method should only be used on a temporary basis. Your Administrator account should not be left enabled without a password. So, have a look around, but don't move in.

And when you're done, I strongly urge you to re-enable your user account s and promptly disable the Administrator account. If your goal in accessing the Administrator account is to ditch User Account Controls, a somewhat safer way to do that would be to stick with your account with computer-administrator privileges the one that is not named Administrator.

Open the User Account Control Panel. On the subsequent screen, you'll find an easy way to turn off UAC. There is another possible wrinkle on Method 2. It is possible to set a password for your Administrator account. But there's another way to manage user accounts: the User Accounts Control Panel. User Accounts doesn't display any settings for the Administrator account until you're booted into that account.

But once you're booted into Administrator, it lets you set a password for it without any negative effects. So this is a work-around if you'd like to leave your Administrator account enabled.

It's important to protect it with a password that's not easy to guess or arrive at by trial and error. Despite what it may seem to some people, Microsoft's decision to disable and lightly hide the Administrator account in Windows was a very good one.

Millions of people have for many years been living in this account -- many without even having set a password for it. Doing so makes it easy for malware and hackers to waltz into an account that has unlimited access to the operating system. By changing the name for the account on your computer that has administrative privileges, and by setting a password for it, Windows security is raised considerably.

The user experience for dealing with User Account Control elevations, although improved in Windows Vista Post-Beta-2 Build , is still a little rough. Microsoft has designed UAC in a way that keeps you from having to reboot between changes, but there are still too many nuisance UAC prompts.

There's still development time to go on Vista's User Account Controls. Online editorial director Scot Finnie has been an editor for a variety of IT publications for more than 20 years.

This article was adapted from the July issue of Scot's Newsletter and is used by permission. Scot Finnie, former Editor in Chief of Computerworld, is a freelance writer with decades of experience covering the IT industry. You can also achieve the same result in XP by using one of the third party tools in our article about how to hide specific user accounts from the logon screen. There are a couple of ways to achieve this offline although the following method has a few advantages, like being able to change or reset passwords and run other tools such as Regedit before anyone logs in.

The main requirement is to be able to move a couple of Windows files while Windows itself is not started. We are going to use a Windows installation DVD for the task. If not, try other Dir commands such as Dir C:, Dir E: etc until you find the right drive that shows those folders. Type these commands in order, change the drive letter from D: if you found an alternative drive letter in the previous step.

Close the Command Prompt and then the setup window to force a reboot. The Administrator will then be available from the logon screen. Type the following using the same drive letter as before. Press Y to confirm the overwrite and close the setup window to reboot. Once you have finished with the administrator and can use another account, disable it again using one of the methods above.

Thank you so much for the help with this! This article combined with a youtube video I found with some different steps prior got me up and running! I followed instruction, but administrator still does not show up. I must give you a big thanks.. This is very very helpful for me….. Thanks Again.