How do I make myself always administrator?

Hello,

I am so tired of being prompted to either allow administrator rights or being told that I cannot do something because I do not have administrator rights. I own this darn computer, why can't I do what I want with it?

For example, I was trying to run SFC /scannow from a command prompt window. The system said it would not let me because I did not have administrator rights.

How can I make myself permanently the administrator of my own computers?

At the very least, how can I elevate myself to run sfc /scannow?

Thanks!

Here you go:

Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

Right click cmd prompt and select "Run as Admin".HTH.

Thanks to everyone, since you all contributed, I am going to write a combined reply.

First, I am the one and only user and, as far as I know, the only account on the computer, so I don't think that I need to enable the system admin account, as much as I need to make my account permanently logged in with administrator privileges.

Thanks for showing me where to go to elevate to admin. I did not know there was a command prompt "accessory" that could be right clicked on and run as admin. I always just did run > cmd <ENTER>

So, I went to that, and elevated myself, then "enabled" the system admin account, and rebooted my computer and nothing came up any differently, as it showed when the new account was enabled in the tutorial. Just to check, and because I wanted to run sfc /scannow, I went to cmd, and it put me right back in the users directory. I tried to run the sfc /scannow and was told again that I do not have rights.. (What is up with that? ) So, I right clicked on command prompt accessory and ran as admin, then was able to run sfc /scannow. It is now at 79% and counting.

But, for the future, is there not a way to make me, the one and only user of this computer, the "elevated admin" with full privileges so that I don't get this error any more?

Thanks guys!

I appreciate your help. When I set up Windows, I only created one account -- my own. I purposely did not create a separate admin and user account. Yeah, when I go to my Windows Explorer, c:\users, there is me, Antonio, Default, and Public. No separate admin. I still want to know how to fix this, but now I also need to know how to access the file log that scannow created. It finished, said there were some errors, and some were not able to fix, and gave me the log file name and location. I browsed to the log file location in WinExplorer, and double clicked on it, and it blaringly says, "Access Denied!", as if to taunt me... j/k :)

It's just a txt file and identified as a Notepad document, so I do not understand what the big deal is... Any ideas?

Thanks very much!

P.S. I did do that net user /administrator:enable command, and it finished without error, then I rebooted as instructed, and was taken right back to my own account.

P.P.S. Maybe there is a matter of semantics here. I do not need nor want an administrator account. *I* am the administrator account, but it just does not give me administrator privileges. Does that help at all?

Hi Antonio,

Firstly I must state that running as a full admin is a very bad Idea, from a security standpoint.

That being said you have two possibilities

you can enable the Hidden administrator - rename this account, if you wish, and run as this user all the time, You will need to set up the user preferences as you prefer and then delete your original user account.
The major issue of this method is that it duplicates all the bad security practices that became common in XP.

Another option that is similar, (but will not give quite the same access as the first), is to run as the account you now have but to disable the UAC which should give you administrator access to the system.
There are area of a win7 setup which do not as installed have the Administrator group assigned as owner and for these rare items you will need to run as the Hidden administrator.

the best option for todays environment is to get used to the way that Windows 7, and other modern systems such as Linux work, with administrator rights

Hello Barman58,

Thanks for your helpful comments! I guess I will back into this by saying that I understand where you are coming from about user rights, etc., having worked in a UNIX environment at the Santa Cruz Operation, and then later having dealt with setting individual's network permissions as a Netware(?) administrator. However, from what I learned at SCO, the sysadms were the GODS of the system, the "masters of the [virtual] kingdom". I think of myself as the master of my own computer. It's mine, and I try to take care not to do things that would get me into trouble.

With that said, I do not even mind the "Do you want to run this..." prompts, although pretty much everyone else does. What really bugs me is being told that I do not have rights on my own system! I guess it's just the language that I need to get over, but it just bugs me. So, what you're proposing, turning off UAC, I think, would not solve this issue. I think the issue would need to be done the other way you mentioned, and I do not care to do that at this point, because I don't want to create a new account, re-do the settins, etc.

But, for my next Windows install, perhaps you can tell me how to start fresh as this sysadm user? And...I would appreciate any input you have about why it is that users need to be "protected" from computers. They are not danerous. Well, maybe if a battery explodes or something, but I was always taught that users can't do anything to harm a computer. It's just hardware. My instructors and me, when I was teaching, always said, to people, don't be afraid, you can't break it.

As an aside, I am familiar with this thinking, although I do not understand it, because I had been printing Web pages to XPS files for reference. Then, Microsoft in its insane logic, decided that these files, when printed from IE, must be locked. So, unless you go in and unlock them each time, they cannot be seen across the network. They claimed it was for "user protection". I do not understand how I, printing a file to XPS, could be harmed any more than printing to paper and having it spontaneously burst into flames. It just is not going to happen... Oh well, I guess that's why Adobe, the "benevolent evil" created PDFs.

P.S. Maybe you can tell me also why I cannot get into a txt log file that was just created when I ran sfc /scannow. When I double click on the filename, it says, "Access Denied!" How can I open this?

Thanks again for all your helpful comments!

juanantoniod said:

As an aside, I am familiar with this thinking, although I do not understand it, because I had been printing Web pages to XPS files for reference. Then, Microsoft in its insane logic, decided that these files, when printed from IE, must be locked. So, unless you go in and unlock them each time, they cannot be seen across the network. They claimed it was for "user protection". I do not understand how I, printing a file to XPS, could be harmed any more than printing to paper and having it spontaneously burst into flames. It just is not going to happen... Oh well, I guess that's why Adobe, the "benevolent evil" created PDFs.

That problem is actually a side effect to how IE is ran in Windows Vista and Windows 7. IE itself is running in a sandbox with very little to no permissions. Running IE and other internet connected applications this way prevent remote exploits from compromising the system. Which is very easy to do these days.

You will want to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandato...egrity_Control It explains how accounts can be Administrator without Administrator power all the time. Medium = Standard User Power, High = Administrator Power.