Windows 7: Blocked admin account

This actually comes from a topic on another forum site that does not see many users these days. I have tried to help this person, but to my knowledge he has not found a solution and Microsoft refuses to help in any way.

"My daughter's user ID was the admin account for her new laptop running Windows 7. She went outside, leaving it running. My 13-year old grandson, as a joke, made her a standard user and his user account the admin account. The problem is this: my daughter had used Windows 7's parental controls to block his then standard user account 24/7 to keep him off of her computer. Now that his is the admin account, Windows will NOT let that account logon. It says, “logon failure: account logon time restriction violation” any time we try to login using the admin account. Even "Run As Administrator" generates this message."

I told him how to contact Microsoft, and he replied saying that MS keeps telling him they don't help with forgotten passwords. His daughter explained as clearly as possible the situation, and after a pause the person said the same thing over again. The most recent thing I advised was that he try doing a system restore in safe mode, but I have not heard back. Will a system restore reverse the account type change? Any other ideas on how to fix this?



I'm honestly just curious at this point and would like to know how to solve such a problem in the future.

Don't we all just love these helpful help desks I too would be interested in hearing how you could get around this one

Towards the bottom of this page there is a download link for Ultimate Boot CD. Using whatever computer you are on, download that and burn it.

Use the CD to boot onto the computer you can't login to, and follow these instructions.

You can change the boy's password, restart the computer (boot normally) login, reset the time restrictions set on the daughters user ID. Done!

I know its for XP, but we've used it on 7 here at work.

How to Enable or Disable the Windows 7 Built-in Administrator Account ... The built-in Administrator account is an account that has full access and permission on the computer. This will show you how to enable or disable the built-in Administrator account in Windows 7... Logon using this account, then make the necessary changes... Be sure to password protect this account so little brother doesn't have access to it.... Hope this helps...

How to Enable or Disable the Windows 7 Built-in Administrator Account

How would they do that when she cant logon?

I passed along what Kirsch said to the person who is having the problem. If he is still having issues or is unsure how to do what Kirsch said, I will pass on the bit about the standard Administrator account. I'm surprised I didn't think of that, as I already knew it existed.

Edit: Kirsch, she can logon, but only as a standard user, and she needs to have administrative controls in order to make even the slightest change. P.S. can the admin account be activated by a standard user?

Please let me know how it goes! I know for a fact my method would work, it's just basically burning and booting with that program might be a little advanced

Hello Petey7, welcome to Seven Forums!




Have a look at the tutorial at the link below, there's everything needed to reset a user password including a link to a boot disk if needed, it's really easier to do than it first looks, have a look and pass it along.


Password Reset

Bare Foot Kid, I will tell you what the OP told MS. Passwords do not need to be reset. That is not the issue at all. Read the first post more thoroughly. Thank you for the warm welcome and for trying to help. I know it's easy to misunderstand what the problem is and that you are probably used to talking to people that have little clue how to do something as (relatively) simple as resetting a password, but making sure you understand the problem is key to helping solve it.

I have yet to hear back from the guy, and not sure if I will. It's been a couple days, so I'm not hopeful. Thank you to everyone that responded.

Howdy, sorry for not paying attention earlier.


I just enabled the "Administrator" acct from a standard user acct in VirtualBox, but they'll have to know the admin acct password the boy set to open an elevated command window in the standard user acct, from there they should be able to sort the issue.