Unleash The Secret Admin in Vista ~ Ask The Admin

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Unleash The Secret Admin in Vista

The rules of the Administrator account changed in Vista. Did you hear?

What do you mean you didn't get the memo?

It was in between TPS reports and all.

Before Vista, the Administrator account was not hidden out of the box and most users used an Admin account for their every day work. Vista did away with this and disabled the Admin account by default.

Did you know this super special account doesn't get UAC prompts?




Do you hate those UAC's as much as I do?

Before going further TAKE NOTE: Microsoft does not recommend doing this and feels The UAC is their way of protecting you from shooting yourself in the foot.


With that being said do WE really need this extra layer of protection? ...

(Mind you I have see someone use group policy to lock everyone out of every app on a production server. )

But if you are game lets turn this account on by following these steps:

First, open an elevated command prompt by typing cmd into the Search box on the Start menu, right-clicking the command prompt icon that appears at the top of the Start menu, then selecting Run as administrator -- or just use the shortcut you created in the previous hack.

Then enter this command and press Enter:


Net user administrator /active:yes

From now on, the Administrator account will appear as an option on the Welcome screen, along with any user accounts you may have set up. Use it like any other account. Be aware that it won't have a password yet, so it's a good idea to set a password for it.

If you want to disable the account and hide it, enter this command at an elevated command prompt and press Enter:

Net user administrator /active:no
[Via ComputerWorld]

Alright back to being slightly less secure and making our lives slightly less repetitive!

_TheSecretAdmiN_