Windows 7 Home Premium

Hi. Since i bought my new laptop, iv had one admin account (excluding the hidden one). It has been fine until yesterday. I had to create a new account for a friend. I made that a standard account. Then after they were done with the acount i deleted it. When i logged in this morning, i realised my account (the main admin one) was not admin, but instead it is a guest. I tried using system restore and no luck. I have also tried using various registry tweaks with no luck. I have tried the control userpasswords2 and netplwiz methods with no luck. I have also checked my homegroup, and it says i am not in one. The newest thing i tried, is to run safe mode and login to the windows admin account. i then used that to create another user with admin rights. then i logged into that account, and went to user accounts. When i clicked on manage other accounts, my main account doesnt show up. the windows admin one and guest show up though. i tried the same thing on the windows admin account and got the same result. any help. Thanks

 

What about from system admin doing a system restore?

 

That is where i tried to do the system restore from. I did it 3 times. Trying different dates. The third time i used the earliest date on the list. Once it restarted, i logged in and i still was not admin.

 

Can't you log in as system admin and change your account type to full admin account?

 

As i said before, when i goto user accounts, my main account does not show up.

 

Whoops.
Ok, when logged in as admin can you see the files of ur faulty account, maybe you could just copy them over to ur newly created admin user account

 

I could do that. However, the files that i installed on my main account might not work on the new account. Also i have about 35 games on my main account. copying them to new account would take ages. anything else i can do instead?

 

Activate the hidden admin account for use in normal boot,
whilst in safe mode admin account open elevated command prompt,
type: "net user administrator /active:yes" and press Enter.
exit command prompt.
reboot into normal boot and use the win7 admin account, this should hopefully allow you to change your other account into admin

 

I just tried that and still no luck. It did not show my account. It just showed the guest account and my other admin account.

 

any other options?

 

sounds like you may have hit a bug of Windows.

The only remedy I can think of is to do the following :

1. boot into safe mode and login as admin
2. rename the working user account with admin right's home directory to something else say \users\newaccount -> \users\newaccount.bak
3. rename the old accounts home directory to \usrs\newaccount
4. login as the new account and take ownership of the new home directory as the ACLs may still be tagged with the old account

This would not fix any registry of the old account which I have no idea if they are needed for your application/games.

BTW, please backup before you try this.

 

thanks for the answer, but thats looks complicated. If you don't mind, can you please make a little tutorial?

 

without knowing which part confuse you, I don't know how I can make it more straight forward.

May be you can capture your list of directory under \Users so I know what you have now and try to make it easier ?

The essence of what I described is kind of move your disappeared account's home directory(under \Users) to be the home directory of your newly created account(that still has admin right). This part is not that difficult. But all directory and files under that old directory still is tagged with the old account's security id. You would need to take ownership of them(you can because you have admin right) then change it to the new account(after taking ownership, you can as you are now the owner).

The ownership operation is under the 'Security' tab when you right click on the directory and select properties. The 'Advance' button would lead you to that.