Administrator without admin rights problem

[Randy Brook]

Win2k workstation on a Win2k WAN. Trying to install software gets a
message like "You don't have administrator rights to install" or
something similar. This comes from various programs, like those using
Wise installers.

The thing is, as far as we can tell we have admin rights when doing
the installs. We have tried with a local logon using Administrator and
Administrators, both of which are members of the local admin group. We
have also tried a logon to an admin account on the domain. All get the
same kind of message.

It's as if the admin group itself has its admin rights secretly
blocked. This started happening recently on this machine. Other
similar machines in the same office do not have this problem.

Any suggestions on where to look?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Verify that the user account is actually in the local administrators group.
You can use the command net localgroup administrators to see members of that
group. Also try logging on as the built in administrator account to see if
that works or not. If that account does not then the computer may have been
compromised and should be fixed ideally with a pristine install of the
operating system. Also use Event Viewer to check the logs for any pertinent
Event IDs that may provide a clue including any for userenv that may
indicate a problem locating a domain controller and run the support tool
netdiag on the computer looking for any related problems such as dns, dc
discovery, domain membership, or trust/secure channel. --- Steve