Vista - administrator account?

hi,

one thing i've always done with previous versions of
Windows is run as a restricted user account & switch to
the administrator account only when necessary. I've never
seen the point of running with admin rights for daily use.

So I just installed Vista Ultimate. It does as XP did,
giving the first account created admin rights. I went in
& removed that user from the Administrators group. But it
appears there was no separate Administrator user created,
so now I can log in only as my user, which has no rights
to do anything...

is there anything i can do to get admin rights back long
enough fix things? Is it the case that Vista really
doesn't create a separate Administrator account?

thanks

nm, i see they do create one but it has no password set &
is disabled by default. Looks
like reinstalling is the only option.

Hello,

The administrator account is there, however it is disabled by default and
can only be used in an emergency (access via safe mode).

This qualifies as an emergency. LOL.

Reboot your computer into safe mode and then login with the Administrator
account. Then, I would suggest adding your user account back to the
administrators group.

In Windows Vista, even though your user account is in the administrators
group, programs run as if they were started by a standard user. Only
programs that request permission ("Windows needs your permission to
continue") will run with your admin privileges.

So, administrator accounts in vista are really an admin-account-on-demand.

"The" administrator account is different in that it acts just like the
Windows XP administrator account - no prompts, everything runs with full
privielges.

You can still create another standard user account and run with it; however,
I would suggest that you use the "new" style vista adminstrator accounts
exclusively and completely forget about the default built-in administrator
account (except in emergencies).


--
- JB
Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/