All Administrators Equal?

[Alan P. Biddle]

Hi,

I have WIN XP Home, SP1, upgraded from WIN 98 SE. On the User Account
page it shows both "Administrator" and "Alan" as members of the
Administrators Group. "Alan" has the comment "Account upgraded from
Windows 98."

Are there any cases where I would need to go to the "Administrator"
administrator account to do something?

Alan

 

[FrankV]

If something went wrong with "Alan" you would have to use the default admin
to re-create it.

Frank

 

[Roger Abell]

The built-in Administrator account has one a few hard-wired
differences. Otherwise, all members of Administrators group
are of equal power. Some of the unique things are that it is not
possible to completely disable the built-in (it will be available
in a Safe Mode boot)., and that it cannot be deleted.

 

[FrankV]

Is there any way of recreating the built-in Administrator account? If I try
to access the built-in through safe mode, it accepts the password but then
locks up at the '...loading' prompt. I have to reboot to break out of this.
I can log in to my normal admin account ok.

Frank

 

[Alan P. Biddle]

Roger,

Thanks for the info. I had not noticed that the upgrade process had
generated a second Admin account, and was wondering.

Thanks,

Alan

 

[Roger Abell]

Just make certain that you have control of all Administrators
group members, i.e. strong passwords on all of them.
People forget (or are unaware) that something like
I am the Sole Master of This Machine !
is a valid password (passphrase) and it is very unlikely
that it would be cracked.

 

[Roger Abell]

hmmm
Well, you cannot define an account that exists, and the built-in
admin cannot be deleted . . .
You might want to try cleaning out startup items in its profile,
or in a more extreme case, force the profile to be recreated by
renaming the existing one.