Vista - Administrator Account

Hello Learner,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

Did you type this below (step 5) to enable the account in a elevated command prompt (Steps 1 to 4) ?

net user administrator /active:yes

It sounds like you just mistyped the command.


Shawn

P.S.
North TX

...duhhh, no...I typed in 'net user administrator /active:yes'
after . . . C:\Users\Barbara> after I clicked on the command to open . . . here is a snapshot of screen...well bless, can't get Snipping Tool to work here. Anyway, it's the first command line that appears and as stated before that's what I got. Didn't get past 1st step.
Thanks.

Learner,

Since you see C:\Users\Barbara, then you are not in an elevated command prompt. In a elevated command prompt you will see C:\Windows\System32 instead. Be sure to right click on cmd at the top of the Start menu white area as in the example screenshot, and click Run as administrator. Afterwards, type the command and it should enabled the built-in Administrator account for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Okay, now I know how to enable/disable the builtin Admin account. Is there a way to enable it only in safe mode? (Like WinXP)

Thanks for help

Thanks Shawn...I put an extra space in behind the / mark...when I tried again it went thru successfully.
I just love success!
Barbara (in SE Texas)

Your welcome Dr. Amarendrakr and Barbara. I'm happy to hear it is working now for you.

Shawn

Hi Clancy,

Yes, you can have it set to work only in Safe Mode.

One way:
You can boot into another account for Vista normally, and when you boot into Safe Mode, log off and log on to the built-in Administrator account. I would create a password for the built-in Administrator account to prevent anyone with access to your computer from logging on to it though.

Second way: (Not practical though)
Disable the buil-in Administrator account to prevent it from being able to log on with in Vista. If all of your normal administrator accounts are deleted or not functioning for whatever reason, then when you boot into Safe Mode, it will boot into the built-in Administrator account automatically.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

OK Shawn...I "gotter done" yesterday, but somehow I must have messed up big time. Here's the sequence:

I had User#1 Barbara (as Admin), User#2 estxgran, and User#3 guest on my desktop, and only User#1 Barbara (me) was logged on.

I went ONLY thru step #1 (apparently), and now I have a new User/Administrator, which has no logon password, but worse than that, User#1 and User#2 are being shown as logged on.

Should I: print out these instructions and just start over, or do you need to back me out of this? ;>)

TIA...and bless you.

Hi Barbara,

It sounds like you may have switched user instead of logging off from user #1 & #2. You can log on to them again and then log off, restart the computer to log all users off, or use Task Manager (see link below for how) to log them off.

Task Manager Users - Log Off a Local User


The new built-in Administrator account you just created in this tutorial does not have a pssword by default. If you wish to keep it enabled, then you this tutorial will show you how to create a password for it like the others if needed.

User Account - Create Password

Hope this helps,
Shawn