Windows 7 - Home Premium UAC Lockout

I help out a friend with her computer every once in a while, and apparently her copy of Home Premium (included on a Dell desktop) has prevented her from running anything other than included-programs (ie Internet Explorer) and Office 2007. There is no password on her account, and everything was fine since the last time I visited. Basically anything that requires admin privileges (which she is) brings up the UAC "allow/deny access" box. But here's the thing. It says to type in an administrator password, although there is no password to be typed in.

Also, the supposedly "hidden" Windows 7 Admin account that comes with no password by default now appears on the logon screen. That's why it doesn't give a password box to type one in. Doing some research, I figured out that I can make a new user and add it to the administrator group through the recovery console, but doing that just gave me an error. I am aware this is a bug in Windows, and am 100% sure this is not malware. I've done my research, but have yet to find a less-invasive fix. Can anyone help me out on this one? I'm stumped. I cannot access UAC to deactivate it.

PS: I can access her computer through LogMeIn, but I suspect I'll need to be physically there.

I suspect you are probably correct but out of interest has this problem occurred out of the blue, or been an issue since inception (since being purchased)? Would a system restore to a previous good working state help?

Out of the blue. She's an old lady and she hasn't installed anything. She has her included 15-month McAfee subscription, and it didn't detect anything. I even scanned with Malwarebyte's. She's the type who will call me if any dialogue box she is unsure of comes up and I use LogMeIn to check it out from home. The only two things she uses the computer for are for checking her Yahoo! Mail and for typing up letters in Word. Like I said, I know the cause of the problem, but I can't find a suitable fix.

System restore?

That was my first idea, but it didn't do anything. I guess I can go back and try to edit the registry key that displays/hides that admin account and see what happens.

You might want to try this: User Account Password - Change from WinRE and see if it does the job.

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Try opening a command window and running "control userpasswords2" at the command line. That may enable you to reset the passwords for existing accounts.

Well guys, I solved this issue by using the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset DVD to reset the Administrator account password and change her account level from Standard User to Administrator. Now I'm hiding the default Admin account and everything works fine. Thanks for all your help, and I'll rep accordingly when I get home!

- Fred

thanks for letting us know and getting it resolved.