Administrator Account....GONE!

[Guest]

I added another account to my XP Pro. It did NOT give me the option to make
the account limited. I could ONLY make it an 'administrator' account. I did
NOT delete the OLD admin account, but after rebooting, the original admin
acct was GONE. I called MS help(less) center and although friendly, they
weren't able to help. Do you have any suggestions as to how I can restore
the old account?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks...

 

[Malke]

I added another account to my XP Pro. It did NOT give me the option
to make
the account limited. I could ONLY make it an 'administrator' account.
I did NOT delete the OLD admin account, but after rebooting, the
original admin
acct was GONE. I called MS help(less) center and although friendly,
they
weren't able to help. Do you have any suggestions as to how I can
restore the old account?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks...

Nothing is wrong. When you add another user account with administrative
privileges on XP Pro, the built-in Administrator account is hidden.
This is by design. It is always better to *not* use the built-in
Administrator account for daily purposes.

The best solution for you is to create a new user account for yourself
and then copy your data and settings from the Administrator account
(which you were apparently using for daily work) to the new account.
You'll need to log into the new user account once before you can copy
anything to it and you'll need to do the copying from a user account
that is not the ones from which you want to copy from and to. So the
new user account you just made which precipitated this post will be
ideal.

Copy a User Account -
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=811151

In the meantime, you can access the built-in Administrator account by
doing Ctrl-Alt-Del twice at the Welcome Screen. This will bring you the
classic logon box where you can simply type "Administrator" (without
the quotes) and whatever password you assigned.

If you decide to live on the edge and continue to use the built-in
Administrator account as your personal daily account, you can add it to
the Welcome Screen with this fix by MVP Doug Knox:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_desc/xp_admin_ok.htm

Malke

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I added another account to my XP Pro. It did NOT give me the option to
make the account limited. I could ONLY make it an 'administrator'
account. I did NOT delete the OLD admin account, but after rebooting,
the original admin acct was GONE. I called MS help(less) center and
although friendly, they weren't able to help. Do you have any
suggestions as to how I can restore the old account?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks...

The old admin account is still there. However, in XP Pro, once you create a
second account that is in the Administrator group, the original
administrator account no longer appears on the welcome screen.

You have several options. If you will rarely use the old admin account,
then do nothing. You can still log in with that account if necessary. That
is done by pressing CTL-ALT-DEL twice at the welcome screen. When you do, a
more Windows 2000 looking logon dialog will appear where you can enter the
original admin account credentials and log on.

If you want the administrator account to appear on the Welcome screen,
download and install Tweak UI from
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx.
Once that is installed, run Tweak UI (Start->All Programs->Powertoys for
Windows XP->Tweak UI and go to the Logon section where you can specify this.

 

[Guest]

It worked

Thanks for the help!

Nothing is wrong. When you add another user account with administrative
privileges on XP Pro, the built-in Administrator account is hidden.
This is by design. It is always better to *not* use the built-in
Administrator account for daily purposes.

The best solution for you is to create a new user account for yourself
and then copy your data and settings from the Administrator account
(which you were apparently using for daily work) to the new account.
You'll need to log into the new user account once before you can copy
anything to it and you'll need to do the copying from a user account
that is not the ones from which you want to copy from and to. So the
new user account you just made which precipitated this post will be
ideal.

Copy a User Account -
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=811151

In the meantime, you can access the built-in Administrator account by
doing Ctrl-Alt-Del twice at the Welcome Screen. This will bring you the
classic logon box where you can simply type "Administrator" (without
the quotes) and whatever password you assigned.

If you decide to live on the edge and continue to use the built-in
Administrator account as your personal daily account, you can add it to
the Welcome Screen with this fix by MVP Doug Knox:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_desc/xp_admin_ok.htm

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

 

[Guest]

It worked

Thanks!

The old admin account is still there. However, in XP Pro, once you create a
second account that is in the Administrator group, the original
administrator account no longer appears on the welcome screen.

You have several options. If you will rarely use the old admin account,
then do nothing. You can still log in with that account if necessary. That
is done by pressing CTL-ALT-DEL twice at the welcome screen. When you do, a
more Windows 2000 looking logon dialog will appear where you can enter the
original admin account credentials and log on.

If you want the administrator account to appear on the Welcome screen,
download and install Tweak UI from
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx.
Once that is installed, run Tweak UI (Start->All Programs->Powertoys for
Windows XP->Tweak UI and go to the Logon section where you can specify this.