G
Guest
someone deleted my administrator user. Please tell me how to get it back. I need help. Thank You
V
*Vanguard*
"deby" said in news:[email protected]:
You sure that perhaps it was't simply renamed (so it is no longer named
"Administrator")?
Do you have another user account that was added to the Administrators group
(so you have admin privileges under that account)? If so, log under there
and run "control userpasswords" to see what accounts you have defined,
including any administrator accounts.
Note that Windows XP royally screws over the admin accounts in that it will
hide the Administrator account once another account is defined that is in
the Administrators group. In other words, once you define your account to
be an administrator account, Administrator seems to disappear. You won't
see it on the Welcome screen (which only appear if you are on a workground
and left the default to show the Welcome screen instead of the classic login
screen). At the Welcome screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to get the classic
login screen to see if you can login under Administrator. Administrator
won't show up under the normal User Accounts applet in Control Panel and why
I mentioned running "control userpasswords2" instead. You can also run the
Computer Management MMC (compmgmt.msc) and look under its Local Users and
Groups -> Users node to see what accounts have been defined.
Windows XP has dumbed down its interface to hide Administrator even from
administrators that need to manage all accounts, including other
administrator level accounts. Too many beginner or neophyte users of
NT-based versions of Windows were using the Administrator account as their
own personal account. It is supposed to be the backup account. You define
your own separate admin-level account to use for regular admin activities.
Microsoft decided to treat administrators as idiots, too.
You sure that perhaps it was't simply renamed (so it is no longer named
"Administrator")?
Do you have another user account that was added to the Administrators group
(so you have admin privileges under that account)? If so, log under there
and run "control userpasswords" to see what accounts you have defined,
including any administrator accounts.
Note that Windows XP royally screws over the admin accounts in that it will
hide the Administrator account once another account is defined that is in
the Administrators group. In other words, once you define your account to
be an administrator account, Administrator seems to disappear. You won't
see it on the Welcome screen (which only appear if you are on a workground
and left the default to show the Welcome screen instead of the classic login
screen). At the Welcome screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to get the classic
login screen to see if you can login under Administrator. Administrator
won't show up under the normal User Accounts applet in Control Panel and why
I mentioned running "control userpasswords2" instead. You can also run the
Computer Management MMC (compmgmt.msc) and look under its Local Users and
Groups -> Users node to see what accounts have been defined.
Windows XP has dumbed down its interface to hide Administrator even from
administrators that need to manage all accounts, including other
administrator level accounts. Too many beginner or neophyte users of
NT-based versions of Windows were using the Administrator account as their
own personal account. It is supposed to be the backup account. You define
your own separate admin-level account to use for regular admin activities.
Microsoft decided to treat administrators as idiots, too.
G
Guest
That's not quite the same thing as "the administrator user was deleted".
Just some possibilities:
Possibility #1:
Check that your %temp% folder actually exists.
(In task manager, start a new task - "cmd" - type "set" and see where temp is
pointed to, and make sure that the directory exists) - this is a "per user"
setting, but there is also a machine setting that becomes the default if there
is no setting for the user.
Possibility #2:
Some permissions may have been changed on folders or drives.
One of the most common that I have seen is that someone removes the "everyone"
permissions without putting in some other group/users permissions that allow
access. "Everyone" does not mean "everyone in the world" - it means "everyone
that I know (i.e. is in some group that this machine recognizes)".
You may have to log in as another administrator, and check the permissions
from there.
Possibility #3:
Something has gone wrong with the administrator user's profile (registry) -
you could log on as another administrator, and delete the bad profile, letting
it create a new one the next time you log on. This would lose all settings,
etc for that user and put them back to the default users settings - but it may
be the only way to get the user functional again.
Note that these are some of the reasons never to trust any drive or device
with your only copy of anything important (keep a backup somewhere else!) -
always treat each user's profile so that it becomes expendable.
This is also why you always want to have a second user with administrator
privileges - so that you can get in there and fix things. The user
"administrator" should only be used as an emergency backup way of getting in
and fixing or setting up things.
|Vanguard, the problem is that when I get into my administrator user the only
| thing I can do is use task manager. There is only my wallpaper, no task bar,
| no desktop, nothing. How do I fix that
|
Just some possibilities:
Possibility #1:
Check that your %temp% folder actually exists.
(In task manager, start a new task - "cmd" - type "set" and see where temp is
pointed to, and make sure that the directory exists) - this is a "per user"
setting, but there is also a machine setting that becomes the default if there
is no setting for the user.
Possibility #2:
Some permissions may have been changed on folders or drives.
One of the most common that I have seen is that someone removes the "everyone"
permissions without putting in some other group/users permissions that allow
access. "Everyone" does not mean "everyone in the world" - it means "everyone
that I know (i.e. is in some group that this machine recognizes)".
You may have to log in as another administrator, and check the permissions
from there.
Possibility #3:
Something has gone wrong with the administrator user's profile (registry) -
you could log on as another administrator, and delete the bad profile, letting
it create a new one the next time you log on. This would lose all settings,
etc for that user and put them back to the default users settings - but it may
be the only way to get the user functional again.
Note that these are some of the reasons never to trust any drive or device
with your only copy of anything important (keep a backup somewhere else!) -
always treat each user's profile so that it becomes expendable.
This is also why you always want to have a second user with administrator
privileges - so that you can get in there and fix things. The user
"administrator" should only be used as an emergency backup way of getting in
and fixing or setting up things.
|Vanguard, the problem is that when I get into my administrator user the only
| thing I can do is use task manager. There is only my wallpaper, no task bar,
| no desktop, nothing. How do I fix that
|
G
Guest
----- deby wrote: -----
someone deleted my administrator user. Please tell me how to get it back. I need help. Thank You
Hi Deby! No Immediate help but; you might pony up the $40 bucks for " Microsoft Windows XP INSIDE OUT " . An OZ of prevention is worth a LBs of cure. And it got a CD with the book.
someone deleted my administrator user. Please tell me how to get it back. I need help. Thank You
Hi Deby! No Immediate help but; you might pony up the $40 bucks for " Microsoft Windows XP INSIDE OUT " . An OZ of prevention is worth a LBs of cure. And it got a CD with the book.
P
Parish
*Vanguard* said:
TweakUI in the XP Power Toys allows you to add Administrator[1] to the
Welcome screen (which also adds it to the Control Panel User Accounts
applet).
Some of the ones I've come across deserve to be ;-)
Regards,
Parish
[1] Why didn't MS call the account 'root', a la Unix? So much easier to
type than 'Administrator'
V
*Vanguard*
"Parish" said in news:[email protected]:
And as you add more accounts that are admins then you have to manually add
them using TweakUI. I already knew about that option in TweakUI and was how
I got it to display on the Welcome screen when I first started using Windows
XP. Of course, getting users in workgroups accustomed to a different login
interface (Welcome screen) than what they'll see when using that same OS in
a domain (classic login screen) was stupid. I changed my setup to use the
classic login interface which also prevents anyone walking over the box from
seeing all the username defined there. Also, using TweakUI to add *all*
admin users back into the Welcome screen still doesn't get them displayed in
the dumbed down User Accounts applet shown in the Control Panel. Instead
the user has to use "control userpasswords2" or the Computer Management MMC
(compmgmt.msc). I don't remember how many hours I wasted trying to figure
out why, when logging on under an admin account, there were no permissions
settings available in the right-click context Properties window for a file.
Finally I discovered the "Use simple file sharing" option for Explorer.
Yeah, like let's not let admins have ALL security, sharing, and permissions
features up front and readily accessible. Microsoft has decided all admins
are as stupid as newbie users. Yes, some are as dumb but some are not.
Besides, you really shouldn't be dictating how an owner manages their own
resources. We're running Windows on OUR boxes, not some kiosk in a mall.
Eventually you have to let your children go to make their own mistakes.
I've seen well tenured Unix admins that were extremely knowledgeable end up
locking themself out of the root account because they screwed up
permissions. Either decide an admin account is really an admin account or
create some pseudo-admin account for uneducated users that employs wizards
for every damn admin function to walk the wannabe admin user through all the
steps and to provide all the failsafes. It's like getting into a car that
repeatedly announces, "The door is ajar", when I've deliberately left it
open, like when hauling lumber. Snip, no more damn courtesy announcements!
Well, you can rename the Administrator account, or any account, to whatever
name pleases you. I suppose someone experienced on Novell, Mac, HP-UX, IBM
VM, or whatever would have their own preference for an admin account name.
In Windows, you can rename the account. In Unix, you can't (so everyone
knows the name of that account and only has to guess at the password). If
you want Administrator renamed to root, just do it.
And as you add more accounts that are admins then you have to manually add
them using TweakUI. I already knew about that option in TweakUI and was how
I got it to display on the Welcome screen when I first started using Windows
XP. Of course, getting users in workgroups accustomed to a different login
interface (Welcome screen) than what they'll see when using that same OS in
a domain (classic login screen) was stupid. I changed my setup to use the
classic login interface which also prevents anyone walking over the box from
seeing all the username defined there. Also, using TweakUI to add *all*
admin users back into the Welcome screen still doesn't get them displayed in
the dumbed down User Accounts applet shown in the Control Panel. Instead
the user has to use "control userpasswords2" or the Computer Management MMC
(compmgmt.msc). I don't remember how many hours I wasted trying to figure
out why, when logging on under an admin account, there were no permissions
settings available in the right-click context Properties window for a file.
Finally I discovered the "Use simple file sharing" option for Explorer.
Yeah, like let's not let admins have ALL security, sharing, and permissions
features up front and readily accessible. Microsoft has decided all admins
are as stupid as newbie users. Yes, some are as dumb but some are not.
Besides, you really shouldn't be dictating how an owner manages their own
resources. We're running Windows on OUR boxes, not some kiosk in a mall.
Eventually you have to let your children go to make their own mistakes.
I've seen well tenured Unix admins that were extremely knowledgeable end up
locking themself out of the root account because they screwed up
permissions. Either decide an admin account is really an admin account or
create some pseudo-admin account for uneducated users that employs wizards
for every damn admin function to walk the wannabe admin user through all the
steps and to provide all the failsafes. It's like getting into a car that
repeatedly announces, "The door is ajar", when I've deliberately left it
open, like when hauling lumber. Snip, no more damn courtesy announcements!
Regards,
Parish
[1] Why didn't MS call the account 'root', a la Unix? So much easier
to type than 'Administrator'
Well, you can rename the Administrator account, or any account, to whatever
name pleases you. I suppose someone experienced on Novell, Mac, HP-UX, IBM
VM, or whatever would have their own preference for an admin account name.
In Windows, you can rename the account. In Unix, you can't (so everyone
knows the name of that account and only has to guess at the password). If
you want Administrator renamed to root, just do it.