Admin Account without Admin Rights?

[Guest]

Hello,

Looks like my XP Pro box got hacked a couple of days ago. Not quite sure
how, but anyway, my question concerns the following:
The attacker managed to set my normal admin account to Limited, and turn my
limited account to Admin. But they also disabled all actual management
functionality for me, e.g. I can't create users or change the type of
account, etc.
Yet under User Accounts, my account is listed as an Admin account.
How's that possible? Can you specify a second password that is separate from
the normal one? Create another account with the same name and hide it so that
only the normal account shows up and looks like it was an admin account
without actually being one?

Very strange.

I got myself real admin back with the help of the UBCD4Win CD, but I haven't
searched for/found the malware yet.

 

[Gordon]

I got myself real admin back with the help of the UBCD4Win CD, but I
haven't
searched for/found the malware yet.

next time just log on as The Administrator and change your account type
there...

 

[Guest]

Hello,

Looks like my XP Pro box got hacked a couple of days ago. Not quite sure
how, but anyway, my question concerns the following:
The attacker managed to set my normal admin account to Limited, and turn my
limited account to Admin. But they also disabled all actual management
functionality for me, e.g. I can't create users or change the type of
account, etc.
Yet under User Accounts, my account is listed as an Admin account.
How's that possible? Can you specify a second password that is separate from
the normal one? Create another account with the same name and hide it so that
only the normal account shows up and looks like it was an admin account
without actually being one?

Very strange.

I got myself real admin back with the help of the UBCD4Win CD, but I haven't
searched for/found the malware yet.

If you are running with the users displayed for quick login, the origianl
Administrator account you set up on installing windowes is not on the list.
Try pressing Control Alt Del twice to bring up the log in screen. Type in
Administrator as the user and whatever password you set up when windows was
installed. If this logs you in you will then be able to change the other
user accounts.

 

[Guest]

Ah, but that's not actually the problem. I booted from my rescue CD, took
admin from my work account and returned admin to the admin account. Not a
relly big deal.
As for other accounts, I have "Adminstrator" disabled, and the account I
installed with is now my work account, ie. limited.
Since I haven't actually found the malware yet, naturally it did its thing
again the next time I booted from hd and made the account I was using admin
again.

I appreciate the replies I've gotten, but really, I'm not wondering how to
get back into my machine, but rather, how the malware manages to turn the
account I'm using into admin yet denying admin rights to me at the same time.