Windows 7 - How to hide built-in Administrator account after activating it?

Windows 7 has sure made this administrator account complicated. You create a default administrator account when installing Windows 7. Ok, that seems easy. Then for security and daily use you create a Standard account. Ok, only a little less obvious. But then it turns out that there is a hidden Administrator account that is disabled by default. What does that mean? Not so obvious.

Now, I had a reason to activate the hidden account. Definitely not easy until you search the forums and go through some procedures. Unfortunately, when Windows starts up, there are now three accounts showing, eg., JohnUser, JohnDefaultAdmin, Administrator.

Next step, to make the Administrator account not so obvious, is even more complicated. Figure out how to get NO accounts to show at logon. That is, revert to the old NT clt-alt-del panel where you have to enter both account name and password. (Also disable Show last logon name.) More complicated, but I got there, too.

I thought I was done. But nooooooo. Anyone who pratices safe computing by normally using a standard account knows this drill. You try to run almost any program, or download an update, etc., and you are asked for the password of an account with admin rights. What happens? You get a dialog screen that shows the name of every admin account. In this case, it would show JohnDefaultAdmin and Administrator.

I cannot find any way to enable the Administrator account and have it stay hidden in the circumstance described above. Anyone else have an idea?


Incidentally, the reason I needed the hidden Administrator account is that it appears to have some powers that the default administrator account does not. In my case, it was the ability to create a rescue disk without getting the widely-reported (0x80070057) error.

See this tutorial.
Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

The problem is not enabling the account. I've done that. What I want to do is not have it show up in the account list that any standard user will see when prompted for an administrator account password. In other words, have it enabled but hidden.

Hello Randy,

It can only be enabled or disabled. Disabling the account does hide it. However, you will not be able to log into it unless it is enabled.