Can you delete the Administrator account?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Smith
  • Start date Start date
J

John Smith

Looks like my previous topic is gonna scroll, so one quick question:

As long as you've created a user account that's a member of the
Administrators group, can you delete the built-in Administrator account and
then later make a new one?

(I seem to have a corrupted admin account. I've been told here that it
should be possible to delete it, but in the Compuserve Winnt forum that you
can't.)
 
Hi,

You cannot delete the administrator accout as it is a builtin accout
Please let me know that why you think that you have corrupted the
administrator account
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
Abhijeet Nigam said:
Hi,

You cannot delete the administrator accout as it is a builtin accout
Please let me know that why you think that you have corrupted the
administrator account
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Click to expand...


Sorry to tell you this but I always create a new Admin account named...Well
I'm not gonna post the name as this gives hackers 50 percent of the battle
to hack my machine, then I delete the original Administrator account.

Jud
 
How do you delete the Administrator account?? Your only supposed to be able
to rename it!!
 
Greetings --

No, the built-in Administrator account cannot be deleted, but it
can be renamed.

Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH
 
Greetings --

How, exactly do you manage that? And, more importantly, why?

Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH
 
OK, thanks. If you check back to the "Multiple Administrator folders
created?" thread started on 20 August, you'll see why I believe I need to do
this. I was hoping I could fix this without reinstalling Windows.

(Only one "Administrator" is listed under Control Panel/Users and passwords,
but there are currently 7 additional Administrator folders under
C:\Documents and Settings called Administrator.COMPUTERNAME;
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.000; Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.001 etc)

The error message is that NTUSER.DAT can't be copied from the Default User
folder to the previous Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.xxx account.
 
Have you ever reinstalled Windows on this machine?
-----Original Message-----
OK, thanks. If you check back to the "Multiple Administrator folders
created?" thread started on 20 August, you'll see why I believe I need to do
this. I was hoping I could fix this without reinstalling Windows.

(Only one "Administrator" is listed under Control Panel/Users and passwords,
but there are currently 7 additional Administrator folders under
C:\Documents and Settings called Administrator.COMPUTERNAME;
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.000;
Click to expand...
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.001 etc)
 
Yes. The hard disk had to be replaced in June & I had to use the IBM
Recovery CD to restore everything back to as-shipped. The depot that
installed the new HD didn't have Windows 2000 so they put XP Pro on. I
wanted 2000 so ran the IBM CD on top of that.

I also have a Win2K CD but if I use that, I miss out on the software that
came preinstalled with the computer (an IBM Thinkpad A31p).
 
P.S. As far as I know, you can't delete the administrator
account. And you asked why it would be a good idea for the
main user account not to be an administrator. There are
actually a few good practices out there to help maintain
security. One of them is to rename the administrator's
account to something inconspicuous (since you can't delete
it.) Then create a new account and name it "administrator"-
but don't give it any rights. Put a 30 character password
on it and leave it alone. Now let's say that someone
decides to hack into your machine. They are going to
attempt to gain access to the administrator account,
right? Well if they ever succeed in cracking the 30
character password, they're going to be surprised to find
out that they hacked into a bogus account with no rights.
A lot of hard work for nothing. :-) If they are able to
hijack your machine and take control of it while you're
logged on as the main user, as long as you don't have
admin rights, then neither do they- and there's only so
much they can do to your machine.
 
When you reinstall Windows over the top of itself, it
retains the folders for the old user accounts in docs and
settings. Instead of overwriting them, it renames them
(administrator001, user001, etc.) You should see one in
there that just says "administrator". That's the one
that's being used by your current Windows installation.
 
OK, but what I'd like to stop happening is the creation of these duplicate
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.xxx accounts. It was up to
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.017 when I deleted them yesterday.

When I started the computer today, there was Administrator and
Administrator.COMPUTERNAME. By the afternoon, after I'd logged off and on a
few times, I was up to .004 again.

Again, these are NOT duplicate users in Control Panel, Users and Passwords.
There, I see only the single Administrator account. What I'm talking about
are multiple, unwanted folders under C:\Documents and Settings.

Also, my understanding of the IBM Recovery CD is that it doesn't reinstall
Windows on top of an existing installation -- it formats the C: partition
and then installs the Win2K version on the Recovery CDs.
 
I know exactly what you're referring to- with one
exception: it doesn't usually create millions of them.
Please let me confirm this: it never stops? It just keeps
recreating these things into oblivion? If so, that's not
right. The first question I would have to ask is: do you
have current antivirus?
 
What "jen" says is not completely correct. You may in fact be logged
into Administrator.0001. Windows recreates a profile with an extension
if for some reason or other it can use the original profile. Or if the
profile it is trying to create is a copy of a roaming profile, and
there is already a local profile of the same name.

Questions is : why can't Windows reuse the profile? On my XP box I
have profiles for "All Users", "Default User", "Guest", "Local
Service" and "network Service".

You definitely need "All Users" and you definitely need "Default
User". (Caveat: I haven't checked this. However I'm pretty sure).

When a user logs in, Windows will first try to find a pre-existing
profile for the user. If it can't find one, it tries to copy the
"Default User" profile. The message indicates a problem with the
"Default User" profile. Check that the ntuser.dat in the "Default
User" directory under "Documents and Settings" a) exists, and b) is
readable by the "everyone" group. Check that ntuser.dat is writable in
your current profile. Check the dates on all the folders in Documents
and Settings to determine which is the most likely profile that you
are using.

Cheers,

Cliff
 
Cliff -
Questions is : why can't Windows reuse the profile? On my XP box I
have profiles for "All Users", "Default User", "Guest", "Local
Service" and "network Service".

You definitely need "All Users" and you definitely need "Default
User". (Caveat: I haven't checked this. However I'm pretty sure).
Click to expand...

Ok, possibly the first problem: there are only two user profiles stored on
my computer: COMPUTERNAME\John and Computername\Marsha. Both are members of
the Administrators group. There are no profiles for "All Users" or "Default
User", or "Administrator".
When a user logs in, Windows will first try to find a pre-existing
profile for the user. If it can't find one, it tries to copy the
"Default User" profile. The message indicates a problem with the
"Default User" profile. Check that the ntuser.dat in the "Default
User" directory under "Documents and Settings" a) exists, and b) is
readable by the "everyone" group. Check that ntuser.dat is writable in
your current profile. Check the dates on all the folders in Documents
and Settings to determine which is the most likely profile that you
are using.
Click to expand...

Although there Control Panel, System, User Profiles shows only the two
profiles I mention above, there are folders under C:\Documents and Settings
for John and Marsha as well as "Default User", "All Users", "Administrator",
and (at this moment), "Administrator.COMPUTERNAME" and
"Administrator.COMPUTERNAME.000".

Search finds corresponding ntuser.dat files in each of those folders except
for the very last of them.

The ntuser.dat file under "Default User" is dated 17 June, the day I got my
machine back with the new HD and restored things from the IBM Recovery CD.
File size is 120 KB. The Name list on the Properties, Security tab lists
"Adminstrators (COMPUTERNAME\Administrators)", "Everyone", and "SYSTEM". All
three have all five sets of permissions set to "Allow" and all five
checkboxes for all three are greyed for allow inheritable permissions.

I think Default User's ntuser.dat might be bad, as both "Administrator" and
"Administrator.COMPUTERNAME"'s ntuser.dat (time-stamped 4:21am today) are
also 120 KB, whereas Marsha's (last checked on 26 Aug) is 340 KB, and John's
(my working account, time-stamped 4:44am today) is 3,148 KB.

So instead of trying to delete the Administrator account, is there a way to
fix the Default User?
 
I haven't let it go on forever. 17 bogus accounts is the most I've let be
created before deleting them. But they just keep coming back...

I have NAV 2004, Live Update enabled, most recent definitions are dated 25
Aug 04.
 
I also found this on the Microsoft site under Microsoft
Knowledge Base Article - 269378:

"Windows NT 4.x handled duplicate down-level account names
by adding the following to the username of the profile,
where each subsequent logon with a different user of the
same name would increment the suffix by one:
..000

Windows 2000 handles duplicate down-level account names as
well but in a slightly more intuitive manner. A suffix is
placed on the username of the profile that is either the
name of the domain, if the user account is a domain
account, or the name of the computer, if the user account
is a local user account. If, by chance, another user with
the same name from the same domain or computer logs onto
the machine, Windows 2000 adds a .000 suffix to the domain
or computer name. If the action happens again, it then
starts incrementing the .000 as well."
 
Thanks, but I don't think that document quite deals with my problem...
This document seems to provide a fix to multiple "John" folders being
created.

On my system, multiple "Administrator" accounts are being created when I'm
not logging in as "Administrator" but as "John".
 
Just trying to help point you in the right direction-
there doesn't appear to be a lot of straight forward
information out there about this.
 
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