I've been demoted "need administrator privileges"

First, I am quite new (1 week) to Win7. I come from XP which I loved and hated to leave. However:

I'm running a Dell Precision M4500, 4Gb ram, I5 quad core, and Windows 7 64-bit

I took my computer out of the box, booted it, created an administrative account with user name and password. I setup the network, installed a ton of software I use daily and a purchased copy of AVG with firewall (groan!). Firefox, Thunderbird, Office, Solidworks, AutoCAD, blah, blah, blah...... Everything was great.

So I come in several days after the initial install to find my one and only account has been "demoted". I no longer have privileges to install software, or change some of my own friggin icons. I am the only admin account, I have always been, I am the big cheese on this computer.

I research, Google, read, tried stuff, checked stuff..... I activated the built in admin account.... now I can change stuff.... but "MY" account is still demoted.... I have no idea why or what happened. It my account SAYS admin, but it doesn't have admin privileges that I am accustomed too.

Is this a built in security "annoyance" of Windows 7 or did I do something wrong?
I've been treating this like any XP system, which is not right I know, but I'm still learning this Win 7 OS....... No good feelings so far. I mean it's pretty... it's stable, but what a headache!



Any ideas??

I'm thinking I did something wrong bc everyone LOVES Win7..... But I can't image what/when/how I changed anything.

Thank you. I'll look into and try that (again) :)

The more I read about this, there are two schools of thought. There are people that say "Yea, that's normal with Windows 7 and it's there to protect you, get used to it" and then others that say "What the!??? I use Win7 everyday and I've never had ANYTHING like that happen..... I LOVE Win7"

So I can't figure it.... btw... the people I know personally that run and love Win7 say "Ummmm, I dunno dude, never happened to me"

Oh, I also disabled the User account control crap after 30 seconds of my new machine. I planned to turn it back on.... honestly..... after the machine was setup.... but now I don't have privileges to turn ON the UAC. ARG!!!

Kirsch said:

Click Start > Right click Computer > Click Manage > Expand System Tools > Expand Local Users and Groups > Click Users > Right click your UserName > Click Properties > Click the Members Of tab

Make sure you are in Administrators. If not, add it.

Thank you sir, but it's Admin......

I just checked it by following your instructions exactly in case this was some hidden setting I didn't know about.

I'm here.... trying to figure out how to attach images.... if it's possible.

Oh, yea... the paperclip... DUH

Anyways,
"Members.JPG" is the members tab you requested
"UserAccounts.JPG" is all active users......

Administrator is the built in system admin account I enabled after all the trouble.

Matt is the first and only account I created to setup the computer

Test is another admin account I created 30 minutes ago to try what richc46 suggested (I haven't logged in with it yet)

AccessDenied.JPG...... I tried to move a shortcut I created out of a subfolder in the start menu

InstallSW.JPG..... I run setup as admin to install softaware I've been using on my old machine for five years. It's an AutoCAD overlay..... it's really a set of Macros that make my work a little easier.

InsuffPrivileges.JPG The program won't install.... I can't install it as the system admin account bc the settings are all wrong (wrong user) and the settings are too numerous to manually correct..... I tried, believe me.