Lost Admin Privileges in Vista

[Charles Nuglene]

I am an admin and ran into a new problem. I have lost my ability to use my
admin token when trying to do certain tasks in Vista Home Premium. I
understand UAC to a point as I have read articles on technet, etc. I can not
run utilities such as CHKDSK /F as I get error stating: Access Denied as you
do not have sufficient privileges you have to invoke this utility running in
elevated mode. I also cannot run things like Windows Update. I run into this
just trying to administer my own laptop. As with any home version I have not
joined a domain so I do not think Group Policies could affect my machine but
I do run my laptop in 100's of domains configuring routers, switches,
servers, etc. I started noticing this change in behavior while configuring
two servers running virtual servers for a major car manufacturer. I have
tried adding new admin accounts but they are all as locked up as this one. i
can do some things but receive errors doing most normal admin activities.

 

[P. Di Stolfo]

Hello,

is it impossible to run them by right-clicking them (e.g. right-click
command prompt) and selecting "Run as administrator"?

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Charles

It's difficult to tell what may have caused this behavior? It may have been
one of the domain servers you were connected to enforcing a policy, through
a script, that runs on any system that connects?
The problem is that without admin privileges, you will not be able to
change whatever registry key might have been involved.

The only thing I can recommend is to try a System Restore point that was
created prior to connecting to those servers, this will revert the registry
back to that point in time and hopefully clear the problem.

One question, do you have a Vista installation disk?

 

[L Wenzel]

I, too, seem to have lost my admin priviledges since an update was
automatically installed yesterday. For example, I can't move my
subdirectories. When I try to do so, I get the error message, "Destination
folder access denied." Also, somehow a new version of Excel seems to have
installed itself and requests a product key. When I input the product key
from the version of Excel that I had been using, it is not accepted.

L Wenzel

 

[Charles Nuglene]

I do have the original cd's for Vista as I requested from manufacturer, what
command line utility can I run in Vista to restore settings and not upgrade
my computer.

 

[Gary. L]

Due to the time lag, this may not help gabsidus, but perhaps other web
searchers will benefit.

SOLUTION: I too lost my Admin privs, following a Vista update, and was
unable to perform certain Admin tasks on my laptop. I've tried restoring to
two prev. configs but ..... no luck. Then, I rebooted, logged back in as the
admin, and was able to create another acct. w/ full admin privs. I rebooted
under the new user, then changed the old admin acct. to standard user,
rebooted, logged back in as the 2nd admin, and restored the 1st admin's full
admin rights. Rebooted and .... Voila. Initially I was unable to turn off the
User Account Control as the 1st admin. nor was I allowed to charge a couple
other programs. Following the work around, I was in full control of my system
and back in the driver's seat. For now.

Hope this helps. G'luck!!!