For some reason, there are some people out there that think Microsoft did away with the local administrator account with Windows 7. Not true – it’s just disabled. Here’s how to turn it back on.
The administrator account is a special account that has full and unrestricted access to all aspects of the OS. For security measures, the local administrator account is disabled by default.
There are two reasons that I can think of (off the top of my head) why you would want to enable the administrator account:
Nag negation
For example, When performing certain functions or configuration changes, it is necessary to open an elevated command prompt. Instead of just double clicking the icon, or typing cmd in the run box, you have to right click the icon (after you find it), then select Run as Administrator. By logging on as the administrator, all command prompts are run with the account. No extra clicks required.
Backdoor
Lets say you are happily surfing around the ‘net, and you find this really great toolbar, or registry hack, or some other shiny new piece of software. Blinded by the purported brilliance of this new software gem, you install it with checking it out. Oops! That was malware! Now you can’t login, and all your information is inaccessible.
Shame on you for not being vigilant and wildly installing uknown software.
But, if you have the administrator account enabled, you can login with that account, and possibly clean up your own account profile. At the very least you’ll be able to recover your data.
- Logon to Windows 7 using another administrator’s username and password.
- Click on the Start button
- Click on Start Search.
- Type, cmd.
- Right-click cmd, select ‘Run as administrator‘ from the shortcut menu.
- In the black ‘DOS box’, type the following at the command line:
Net user administrator P@ssw0rD
Net user administrator /active:yes - You should get the following message after each command:
The command completed successfully.
I’ve included the sample password above (P@ssw0rD) for demonstration purposes only. You should select your own strong password that only you know.