Enable the hidden administrator account in Vista starter, Basic, Premium

Here's how to enable the hidden administrator so you'll have it in user accounts.

Open an elevated command prompt:

Win key / type: cmd / ctrl + shift + enter / confirm the prompt (alt+C)

type: net user administrator /active:yes

If you want to assign a password immediately

type: net user administrator yOurPazzWerd /active:yes

where "yOurPazzwerd" is what you want to assign

Now head over to user accounts:

win key / type: user accounts / hit enter

"manage another account"

Confirm the prompt, you should see the hidden administrator account

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Just as a reminder, this is not recommended for normal use, but the option is there.

In XP Home there is a shareware program that you can use to manage users and groups. If anyone knows of one for Vista starter/basic/premium users, that would be appreciated.

 

Actually, that thread pointed out that the MMC snap-in for the admin of Local Security Policy "secpol.msc" isn't present. The user management abilities you're describing are not found in that tool at all.

The functionality you're describing is located in the "lusrmgr.msc" which is one of several snapins aggregated together and available when you right-click on 'Computer' and choose Manage. 'Computer' (formerly My Computer) might be an icon on your desktop, or it might be on the right-hand side of your start menu near Search and Recent Items. If it isn't in either place, then look in Control Panel->Administrative Tools and you should find 'Computer Management', which is the same thing.

The point of all this is that from this GUI tool, you can re-activate the Administrator account (found in the Users folder) by looking at its properties. You can also set or change the password, etc.

It should probably be mentioned that the reason this account is now disabled after setup is because its a well-known account name and a popular attack vector.

 

Thats correct and why I would prefer to use something like the program that is available for XP Home users. I should have made that clearer.

I have edited the OP. Thanks.

I added an image to the thread showing the dialog you will receive when trying to add the snap-in for users of starter, basic, and premium since there was some confusion about that in that thread.

 

Y'all realize that this is a BAD idea, right? It's like running root on a Unix machine. Windows gives you the ability to run programs under alternate privileges if necessary. You shouldn't ever run as Administrator because every program you run will have full access to your system, including Internet Explorer, and we all know how bad of an idea that is.

 

I was going to explain in detail why I chose to do this and I mentioned that it's not recommended, as other boards have done.

I was playing a game as a normal user. I chose the option to run as administrator and it ran better. Booting fresh, using the hidden administrator, gave me better performance. If there was a software update that addressed this game in vista, then I would not do that. It's an older game and I have a go 6150.

I'm not on a network, I don't connect to the internet, and still have a firewall enabled for this TEMPORARY session when I do this. When I want to go on the internet, I use the user switching to log into my secure account.

I use a firewall that blocks IE from the internet, even when I'm not running as administrator, and on my XP machine, so in my case, it's not an issue.

 

It is a nice way to gain access to and wipe out those free trials of antivirus that come as bloatware on allot of rigs though. Hopefully most will realize how dangerous this can be if improperly implemented. It's not like an ameture would be interested in their hidden admin account

 

I'm a vista noob, but from what I understand, you are running in seperate memory space as an administrative user. Perhaps this is why my game ran better? It's not optimized for vista's new UAC architecture?

I have a question/s and possible tip, that I can only find a few references to, perhaps someone here can help.

1.When installing programs(provided the machine I'm on is completley isolated from anything that can intrude), is it better to install them as administrator and then use them as a "user" and/or is there a difference installing as a user and right clicking "running as administrator"?

2.When I do run as administrator, from what references I can find, I believe UAC is still running(the option is still enabled). Does this offer limited protection?

3.Alternatively, if a program is running buggy/quirky should I first try running it in XP compatability mode, before I try running as administrator, to see if that helps?

I'm probably one of the handfulls that actually likes vista and UAC, I want to use the system in the best and most optimized way possible, but if certain programs don't run well, thats not necessarily vista's fault, so I'm patient enough to wait for solutions from the software company or MS. I'm also experienced enough to run as an administrator if thats my only choice.

Its true what you say about junkware. When I logged in as system admin, lo and behold, I had to do a secondary cleanup of the factory install. I don't want to spend the time reinstalling vista to tell you the truth. I'm booting/idling with about 36-40% memory usage after tweaks.

thanks for any advice on this

ps. if you read the opera thread I started, it performs better right clicking "running as administrator", but that was not a solution for me, and I was able to get opera running tight and fast without doing that.