Windows 7: System Administrator has system restore turned off.

spottedbuckey · 14 Nov 2011

I bought a used pc and when I try to do a system restore it says System Administrator has it turned off along with configuration, ect. My question is, how do I find system administrator and override this? Thanks.

JMH · 14 Nov 2011

Hello spottedbuckey,
As you have purchased a used PC these Tutorials MAY be of of help.

Re Administrator.

Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

Built-in Administrator Account - Change Name

UAC - Require a Password for Administrator

Re System Restore.

System Restore - Enable or Disable

System Restore General Troubleshooting to Fix Issues

System Restore

Brink · 14 Nov 2011

Hello spottedbucky, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Since this is a used computer, I would recommend to reinstall Windows 7 to have a fresh clean copy installed if you have a Windows 7 installation disc or factory recovery partition to do it with. There's no telling what may be on the computer, or what other changes may have been done to it.

JMH · 14 Nov 2011

IMHO > There is no doubt Brink's recommendation is probably the quickest, neatest & possibly the safest way to go if you have the necessary Windows 7 installation disc or factory recovery partition available.

alan10 · 15 Nov 2011

Can you be confident that the previous owner did not :-
1) Innocently leave installed "phone home malware" that he was ignorant of ;
2) or even deliberately planted such for his own purposes.

I would not trust anything that might now be present in any Factory Recovery Partition.
I also would not risk a Windows Repair.
My preference would be for a full DBAN Nuke for a clean foundation and then a legit Windows Install.

Corazon · 15 Nov 2011

Agreed, although a DBAN nuke would be overkill here. That would only be necessary if you wanted to securely wipe out any confidential data, and that's something the previous owner should have done himself.
However, a clean all command issued in Diskpart would be a good measure.

alan10 · 15 Nov 2011

Quote: Originally Posted by Corazon

Agreed, although a DBAN nuke would be overkill here. That would only be necessary if you wanted to securely wipe out any confidential data, and that's something the previous owner should have done himself.
However, a clean all command issued in Diskpart would be a good measure.

Thanks
I will remember that if I ever get an untrusted computer
(so far I have benefited from hand-me-downs from my children that I do trust.)

Regards
Alan

spottedbuckey · 16 Nov 2011

So I would be better off to do a complete format of hard drive then install a clean Win 7, right? I am having problems with this Win 7 that I never had with XP. I can't install my printer because it says I don't have Administrator rights and I'm the only user on the pc. Thanks all for your input. It is much appreciated.

Brink · 16 Nov 2011

Spottedbuckey,

You would be much better off starting with a clean install of Windows 7.

However, if you have a factory recovery partition on the HDD that is used to do a factory recovery/restore to reinstall Windows 7 with, then you would not want to format it. You would only format the HDD if you had say a retail Windows 7 installation DVD to install with instead.

spottedbuckey · 17 Nov 2011

I went ahead with clean install. Thanks.

Windows 7: System Administrator has system restore turned off.

System Administrator has system restore turned off. problems?