No more Admins...

[Guest]

This is my accounts settings: Administrator (disabled), Account A (normal
user), Account B (administrator). I would like to remove Account B for adding
another administrator Account D. I went to computer management with Account
A, UAC asks me te Account B password, I made the Account D and deleted the
Account B. But I make I mistake: I forgot to assign Account D admin right so
I loose a valid Admin in my system. How to recover this issue? I think that
the OS should prevent this issue.

 

[Jeff]

I think "Account A" needs to back away from the keyboard.
The Vista computer management snap-in doesn't allow you to manage user
accounts. I don't think you did exactly what you say you did. You still have
an Administrator account on your machine. Anyways, renaming 'Account B'
would have been easier.

 

[Guest]

If you go to Computer > Manage You open the mmc console and You can manage
users. The problem is that I opened the mmc with Administrative privilege, so
I could repair to may mistake meanwhile the mmc was still open. Once I
deleted the aministrative account, forgot to assign administrative privilege
to second account e closed the mmc I had no more admins (I have Administrator
which is disabled).
Ciao.

 

[Jeff]

Is your computer a member of a domain? What version of Vista do you have?

 

[Kerry Brown]

This is my accounts settings: Administrator (disabled), Account A (normal
user), Account B (administrator). I would like to remove Account B for
adding
another administrator Account D. I went to computer management with
Account
A, UAC asks me te Account B password, I made the Account D and deleted the
Account B. But I make I mistake: I forgot to assign Account D admin right
so
I loose a valid Admin in my system. How to recover this issue? I think
that
the OS should prevent this issue.

Reboot into safe mode. If there are no administrator accounts the disabled
"Administrator" account is suppose to automatically enable itself in safe
mode. You should be able to logon in safe mode with the "Administrator"
account and fix the problem. I haven't tried this myself. Please let us know
if it works.

 

[Guest]

I did something simular to "Rodolfo", but when i boot into "safe mode" the
administrator account is not listed.

What I did is not delete my admin account, but accidentaly added it to a
list of hidden accounts on the "welcome/login" screen in the registry. Now
when i try to do anything that needs admin UAC, there is no option to enter a
username and/or password.

And since I have no other admin account I cannot access the registry to
remove that setting, because its in the local_machine tree which requires
admin access.
I do have the built-in administrator account still, but its inactive (out of
the box default still).

I don't know what I can do to get admin control back on this computer! I
wish the "ctrl-alt-delete" login prompt would be enabled by defauly at the
welcome screen like it is in XP. I could login that way, but its not. There
is a way to enable it but of course you need admin/UAC access to enable it.

 

[Donald L McDaniel]

I did something simular to "Rodolfo", but when i boot into "safe mode" the
administrator account is not listed.

What I did is not delete my admin account, but accidentaly added it to a
list of hidden accounts on the "welcome/login" screen in the registry. Now
when i try to do anything that needs admin UAC, there is no option to enter a
username and/or password.

And since I have no other admin account I cannot access the registry to
remove that setting, because its in the local_machine tree which requires
admin access.
I do have the built-in administrator account still, but its inactive (out of
the box default still).

I don't know what I can do to get admin control back on this computer! I
wish the "ctrl-alt-delete" login prompt would be enabled by defauly at the
welcome screen like it is in XP. I could login that way, but its not. There
is a way to enable it but of course you need admin/UAC access to enable it.

Or, you need to install a third-party registry manager for Vista, such as
VistaManager, from , Ashampoo, or TweakVista.
Such software will enable one to change many hidden options of Vista.

With the exception of Vista Manager, these tools are relatively inexpensive.
All three are easy to use.

Formerly, XP users used TweakUI (from Microsoft) to make such changes easily.
But the introduction of Microsoft's newest OS broke TweakUI for use with
Vista.


Donald L McDaniel
Please reply to the original thread and message.
=====================================================

 

[Guest]

thanks for the suggestion, but I am still lockied out of the computer.

Tweakvista had no options that could fix the problem, and I can't even
install VistaManager because it asks for UAC permission when launching the
setup exe.
(the UAC "ok" button is greyed out and there is no field to enter a username
or password)

There must be a way around this besides formatting the computer!

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure why this doens't work for me, I have not touched the built-in
administrator account, yet when I boot to safemode it is not there.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Hi

It's probably not working because you didn't delete your admin account, you
just hid it. Apparently when you boot to safe mode, the system is detecting
that admin account, even though it is hidden. This is why the built-in admin
account is not showing up there.

I agree, there should be some way around this, but I haven't found the magic
key yet?

I have been doing some extensive testing on this issue, for another user who
was in a similar situation, the only difference was that his admin account
was lost or corrupted somehow when performing an upgrade from Home Basic to
Home Premium. Even though he lost his only admin account, the built-in admin
account would not show up in Safe Mode?

I have tried to recreate this scenario using all 4 consumer versions of
Vista and have not been able to do it, so far?

The last admin account does not offer any way to either change the type of
account to Standard User or delete the account, in the user interface. I
have been able to delete the last admin account at a command prompt, using
the net user <accountname> /delete command. This can be accomplished when
logged into a Standard Account and elevating the command prompt, using the
about to be deleted, admin accounts privileges or, it will even work if you
are actually logged in with that admin account since the actual delete does
not take place until a log off occurs.

In all versions, when the last admin account is deleted and the system is
booted into Safe Mode, the built-in admin account is available for logon.
Having UAC on or off prior to deleting the last admin account does not alter
this behavior.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is booting with the installation disk and
trying to reveal the built-in admin account with the net user administrator
/active:yes command. But that's next. Though the problem with this is
that not everyone has an installation disk.

 

[Guest]

thanks for the update! I am glad someone is taking notice to this issue.

I do have a Vista CD, hmm Do you think maybe doing a repair install might
fix it? Does Vista have this option? I hanv't checked yet.

 

[Michael]

I have read that installing the XBox360 as a media device installs a hidden
administrative account which prevents the safe mood from presenting the
'default' administrator account. If you have XBox360 connected further
investigation may be worthwhile.

(rumor only, I do not have XBOX360)
Michael

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Canadaka,

The repair options in Vista are different from what were available in XP.

Go to this website to see the options and how to access them.

John Barnett's Windows Vista Support: Windows Vista Repair Options:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows_vista_repair_options.htm

One thing you might want to try is using the Command Prompt option in the
repair environment. Follow the instructions on that page and select the
Command Prompt.

Enter the following command:

net user administrator /active:yes

Press Enter.

Make sure that the command is entered exactly as shown, including the
spaces, slash and colon.

This is the command to to show the built-in administrator account at the
Welcome screen. Let us know if this is successful.

 

[Guest]

I REALLY wish this would have worked... don't know why it didn't, the
built-in administrator account has not been touched on this computer.

The command executed successfuly, but when I rebooted had no effect.
I went back to the repair command prompt and tried some other "net user"
commands.

added a password to the administrator account, then tried the active again.
created a new user and added it to the "users" and "administrators" groups.

All commands worked in the command line with no errors, but when I reboot,
there is no no user shown on the login screen.

Its looking more and more like only a re-format is going to fix this...
which is pretty lame.

Is there anyway to edit the registery from this command promt?

 

[Guest]

Hmm thier is actualy an Xbox360 on the network, but I'm pretty sure nothing
has been done with this Vista workstation related to the Xbox.

 

[Michael]

As I understand it, if Vista sees an Xbox on the network it asks an
innocuous question about do you want to be able to use the Xbox, you answer
yes and voila, there is a hidden administrator account added.

Bear in mind that this is just rumor for me as I don't have an Xbox.
The solution as I remember it was the poster had to make a copy of a file,
send it to Microsoft who modified it and sent it back.

I tried a quick Google but don't appear to be using correct keywords to find
that thread.
I think you end up with additional folders under c:/users, might be named
MCExxx (Media extender) for the added administrator account.

Michael