Can't get Administrative privileges

[toonbon]

My Windows 7 was working fine and then a couple of weeks ago it started telling me I didn't have permission to save certain files. I went into Control Panel User Accounts and saw that my account was set for Standard User instead of Administrator:

I'm pretty sure I set this up initially to be Administrator. If I try now to choose the Administrator radio button, the Change Account Type button gets disabled, so I can't do the change.

Does anyone know what might be going on here. How can I get to be Administrator again?

Thanks

 

[pbcopter]

It looks to me that Steve is already an Administrator.

It shows:

Steve
Administrator
Password Protected.

Where are you trying to save the files?

 

[toonbon]

Yes, you're right. Steve seems to already be an Administrator so that's why it disables the option to make Steve Administrator. Yet still, I get warnings that say I have to be Administrator to do something, or I get warnings like below where I've been doing this exact thing for years without a problem:

If I select Save As, as the warning suggests, I'm able to do the save and thereafter I'm able to save to this new location without the warning.

 

[groze]

Some locations in windows 7 don't allow access even when the user is the administrator. There is a registry file called take ownership. Just merge the registry file. Then you right click on the folder you can't access, choose take ownership. Do not do this on the c:\windows folder, it could crash your system (It did mine). You can take ownership of some folders within c:\windows folder but you got to be real careful on which folder to take ownership.

 

[lehnerus2000]

You could create a backup image of your current setup and the try using System Restore to restore your system (assuming you have any SRPs that predate this problem).