Windows 7: Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

Hello Negrometal, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Thank you. I have added a note for this in OPTION TWO so that it will be able to help others.

You're welcome, Brink. This topic is really helpful for the users.
Thank you.

Hello,
This thread is very interesting as usual on this forum.
As we are talking about full rights Administrator Account ,I will have a question,I wanted to discuss for long time already !
Let say,I am the one and only user on my machines (my wife is afraid even touching the mouse )
Why will I hesitate to be always logged as "Big chief "
Of course, I already know your answers
But could you give me good arguments for or against
I mean good arguments,not for exemple: virus infections...or it is not recommended etc...
I want to be able to decide the worth of it based on pro and cons conclusions

"Don't let me be misunderstood..." you know or remenmber this song

Ps: Forgive me for eventual English mistakes, I'm trying my best

Hello Pepito,

The best argument I can think of for against this is that not only do you have full access to everything on the computer while logged on to the built-in Administrator account, but so does everything that is running. Including malware.

Normally when logged into a normal administrator account, you would have UAC as a last line of defense to ask you to give permission when anything tries to run as administrator (elevated) before letting it do so. You do not have this while logged on to the built-in Administrator account.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hello Brink,
this is a very reasonnable answer , but not enough convicing
as you surely aware of, a good active resident guard from a good firewall, deeply configurate
will offer equal or even best protection than the UAC settings
I prefere and easily accept the frequently and annoying prompts from my firewall resident guard,then I'll do from the UAC one's
In my opinion,there is no possible comparison in terms of efficency between this two solutions
by the way,my UAC is disabeled and all my bets on Comodo firewall

Hope to have other constructive opinions too
thank you

Pepito,

Not using the built-in Administrator account unless really needed is just another layer of built-in security and protection. That's all. If you use common sense along with other security measures to fill all aspects of this loss of protection, then that will help to minimize the risk.

It's really just up to you and what your needs are. If you are ok with losing that layer of protection for being able to always have full control, then that is your prerogative since it's your system. However, if you do not need to have full control of everything all of the time, then why put your system at additional risk for no reason. To each their own though.

Hello,
you are absolutely right !
Anyway,I don't use this account permanently
I just wanted to have other opinions on this subject,as I am very new to Seven,only 2 weeks
thank you for your explanations

You're most welcome Pepito. Anytime.

I tried to enable the Administrator account and get "system error 5 has occurred" followed by "access denied".

I'm on a new laptop. First time with Windows 7. Would like my user account to not be the administration account just on general principles. But tried to create an administrator account and was told it already exists, yet it doesn't show up. this shouldn't be this difficult. Either its there, or its not there, and I should be able to control it. Don't know what the average person does.

The Administrator account does already exist, as the computer stated. I recommend using option 2 of this tutorial, as I find it to be the easiest one. Remember that it must be an elevated command prompt. To make it an elevated command prompt, right click command prompt in the start menu and select "Run as Administrator". This gives you control through command prompt that you would otherwise only have when logged into the Admin account. If you need clarification on any instructions, let me know and I will try my best to explain more thoroughly what to do. Please let us know the outcome of you next attempt to activate the admin account.