Lost "administrator" account access

[johnnyK]

After reading the Help topic that states that being
listed as the administrator on my home computer would
make me more vulnerable to trojan horses, I changed my
account status to ordinary user status.
Since I am the owner I need to perform administrative
functions but I have taken away my own priveleges!

How can I regain the administrator account status and
restore my capability to make updates to my system?

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

If you're running XP Pro, press CTRL-ALT-DEL twice at the Welcome Screen,
with no users logged on, and you'll get the older Win2K style logon. Enter
Administrator and any password that you gave for this account during setup,
if you set one at all. For XP Home, you must boot the computer into Safe
Mode to access the built in Administrator account.

 

[Alex Nichol]

After reading the Help topic that states that being
listed as the administrator on my home computer would
make me more vulnerable to trojan horses, I changed my
account status to ordinary user status.
Since I am the owner I need to perform administrative
functions but I have taken away my own priveleges!

How can I regain the administrator account status and
restore my capability to make updates to my system?

This is where the reserve, emergency account called Administrator comes
in. Boot, hitting F8 as BIOS info goes to black; take Safe Mode, There
will then be an icon for Administrator on the Welcome screen. (If not,
hit CTL-ALT-DEL twice and enter the explicit name
Administrator
and leave the password blank)

In that, Start - Run the line
control userpasswords2
where you can select any account name and take Properties - Grouping
which allows you to select Administrators as one of the 'Other' set.

You might then consider making a new account to use day to day, without
Admin status. Provided though that you have good AV and firewall set
up, I'm a bit dubious about that piece of advice - the trojan writers
will no doubt find a way around it. The best defence against trojans is
*never* to open attachments in mail: save them first and check them out.
And remember that some file with an innocent looking .jpg extension
say, may have a hidden .pif one beyond it (and show an MSDOS icon) or a
hidden .lnk one.