How do I enable the administrator account in Vista?

How do I enable access to the root-access admin account in Vista? I'm not talking about creating a user account with admin privileges. Unlike XP, its pretty well hidden and I need it to install something. All the guides to enable it I'm finding are for Vista betas and don't work. Thanks.

 

If you are running Business or Ultimate:
Right click on computer and select manage. Under computer management expand Local Users and groups. Highlight Users and all of the users should appear to the right. Right click on the Administrator entry and select properties. Under the General tab uncheck the option for "Account is Disabled"

 

Another method.
Steps to activate the Administrator account in Vista.
Click on start -> type ‘cmd’ -> right click on Command Prompt -> select ‘run as administrator’,
In the command prompt type ‘net users Administrator /active’ (‘A’ caps in Administrator) and press enter, you will get a confirmation as ‘The command completed successfully’.
You can check the status of the account by the command ‘net users Administrator’,
‘User name Administrator

Account active Yes’

Type exit to close the command prompt.

Click on start and click on Switch User, now you should see a separate icon for ‘Administrator’.
Click on Administrator account, by default it has no password, press enter.

 

It's a bad idea to run as Administrator, you know. There's a reason it's disabled, as Vista is trying to learn from other systems that do it right.

 

Yes, but that does NOT mean that they should just take the ability to run as administrator away from all users. That is ridiculous to restrict everyone from using the administrator account. I can understand that they want to improve the security but simply covering up flaws in the OS by not giving access to the administrator account is not the answer. I also believe that users should be responsible for their own actions. If you choose to login with the administrator account that is your own fault if you then cause problems.

 

Actually, it does. I can't run as root on my Linux box. I can't even log in as root (the equivalent of Administrator on Windows). What happens is that everything runs as default as the user, and IF you need something to run as root, you use sudo. Windows makes it even easier with the option called "Run As...", where you can have only a specific program run as Administrator. It's a very well-accepted security practice, and has been in place for many, many years on Unixes. It's called Least User Privelige, in which you run programs with as few privileges as possible, and then elevate them as needed.. Microsoft is finally starting to learn the lessons everyone else knew eons ago. It's much safer, and just because you don't understand the justification, doesn't mean that it's bad. There are people much smarter than you are who have designed these systems, and Windows has historically been insecure and a haven for crapware, viruses, botnets, and so on PRECISELY because they allowed users to run as Administrator because it was "easier".

Just because you're responsible doesn't mean that every single program you run is.

 

No harm in enabling the Admin at all...as long as you don't run as admin.

Upon install, the account I created during install was admin. I spent the first few days running that way until everything was setup. Then, I enabled the admin account and took away admin privelages to my main account.

Thanks to UAC, everything works great. I happen to like the way this works and don't find it annoying at all. Certainly no worse than typing sudo in ubuntu...