Windows 7 - Built-in Administrator Account - Change Name

No problem Jacked. I wish that there was a way other than creating a new user account and deleting the old one.

i remembered u told the same for windows vista tooooooooo
however a great combination of the forum

as it contains a detailed listing in the index

I have a situation where apparently the built-in Administrator account was renamed during installation (there is no C:\Users\Administrator folder). I would like to rename it back to Administrator, but Windows won't let me do that, claiming that Administrator already exists. The real "Administrator" name is apparently in limbo of some kind...

Hi, welcome to the forums

When you open Command Prompt as administrator what happens when you type net users? Does the Administrator show up in the list?


OS

Yes. The list is presented as:
Administrator User1 Guest
User2

Where User2 is what appears to be the Administrator now. When I issue the

net user Administrator /active:yes

command, I get:

System error 1359 has occurred
An internal error has occurred

Perhaps that's my real problem, and is what started me looking for a possible reason.

Hello MFA, and welcome to Seven Forums.

One way to easily check if the account that you are logged in to is the built-in Administrator account or not, is to make sure that you have UAC set to it's highest top level. Next, right click on a program and click on "Run as administrator". If you get a UAC prompt, then it's not the built-in Administrator account.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

When I'm logged in as user1 (a standard user), the UAC prompt shows user2 (the alias for Administrator) as the username in the dialog box. When I'm logged in as user2, the UAC prompt just asks if I want to allow the program (command prompt in this case) to make changes to the system. I guess that confirms the user2=Administrator supposition, so I'm back to my original question: can that user2 alias be removed, so that Administrator is the only username associated with the built-in Administrator account?

MFA,

Since you are getting a UAC prompt while logged in "user2", then it doesn't appear that "user2" is the built-in Administrator account but only the normal limited administrator.

While logged in as an administrator, run a sfc /scannow command to see if it finds any issues and may be able to fix them.

Afterwards, try enabling the built-in Administrator account from within a elevated command prompt again.

Maybe I misspoke/mistyped; when I'm logged in as user2, and run the command prompt as Administrator, I get a UAC prompt that does not ask for credentials, but does ask if I want the program to make changes to this computer. I'm running sfc now, and will edit this post with the results later.

Later... SFC reports alles in ordnung, still getting the system error when I try to activate Administrator. Also, I cannot log in using Administrator and user2's password, for whatever that's worth.

MFA,

Even if the built-in Administrator account was already enabled, you would still be able to use the a net user Administrator /active:yes command without an error normally. The error you got below is for some other error instead.

System error 1359 has occurred
An internal error has occurred

With this error, I would recommend to see if doing a system restore at boot using a restore point dated when you believe it was before this started. If that does not help, then you may need to reinstall Windows 7.