Administrator's passowrd

[Guest]

I recently bought a new ASUS notebook computer which has Windows XP
Professional pre-installed. When I turned it on for the first time I had to
go through the final setup procedures (entering name, timezone, language
etc). On one screen I was also asked to enter (make up) an administrator's
password and I did. But after setup finished and the computer is ready to
go, this password does not seem to be needed at any point; I also checked
under "user accounts" and a password for the Administrator user account has
not been set.

What was the one I was told to enter for?? How do I change it and when will
I ever need to use it??

 

[Patti MacLeod]

Hi wyt,

The password you created was for the "built-in" Administrator account, not a
User account that has Admin privileges. That account does not appear on the
Welcome screen when you boot into Normal mode (will appear when you boot
into Safe mode), nor does it appear as an account in the User Accounts
applet. You would need to use it when, for instance, you need to log into
Recovery Console, or when there is a problem/corruption with an Admin User
account and there is no other User account that has Admin privileges.



Regards,

 

[Matthew Greig]

If you ever need to login as the administrator (I'm assuming that you're
using the new, "friendly" XP logon and not the classic, domain-centric logon
here) you can log off machine, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del twice and you can to access
the classic, domain-centric logon and then put in the administrator account
name and whatever password you've created for that account.

There are times when things cannot be done (say certain software
applications) without using the box's local administrator account.

hth

Matthew