USER ACCOUNT VISTA HOME PREMIUM

[Guest]

My sister-in-law purchased a new computer. The user accounts are messed up.
At first there were two administrator accounts. This was changed to no
administrator accounts. But the computer still thinks there is an
administrator account and asks for a password to type in. However there is no
place to type it. Therefore the user account are blocked and they do not have
access to the administrator account which means they can not do too much.
How can this be fixed. Is there a way to bypass the administrator password in
order to turn it off and to set up a new admnistrator. They do have a disk
to reload the operating system supplied by the manufacturer and this will be
used at a last resort. Please help. Thanks

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Wboquet

There is a Built-in Administrator account that is hidden by default. This
account can be used to recover from situations such as you are seeing where
all of the visible administrator accounts have been either deleted or
changed to Standard User accounts.

Reboot the computer and when it first starts to initialize, start pressing
the F8 Key until you see a black screen menu. Select the Safe Mode option,
using the Arrow keys and press Enter.

On the login screen, you should see the Administrator account. This account
does not have a password associated with it. Click this account icon and the
system should boot to Safe Mode. Be patient, safe mode can take a few
minutes to load.

Once the system is loaded, go to Control Panel / User Accounts. Select to
"Manage another account" select one of the Standard accounts and then select
to "Change the account type". Change the type to Administrator.

Reboot and log on with the account you just changed. Always make sure that
you have at least one administrator account configured on the computer.

 

[Guest]

I am having the same problem with Vista home Premium.

I knew for a fact that you can do this on Windows XP machine but not the
case for my brothers Vista machine.
I tried this safe mode attempt before i saw this page and there was no
"Administrator" account, Just his own.

What now?

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

I am having the same problem with Vista home Premium.

I knew for a fact that you can do this on Windows XP machine but not the
case for my brothers Vista machine.
I tried this safe mode attempt before i saw this page and there was no
"Administrator" account, Just his own.

What now?

James

Vista handles the Built-in Administrator account differently from what you
saw in XP.

In XP, anytime you boot to Safe Mode, the Built-in Administrator account is
always shown on the login screen.

In Vista, anytime you boot to Safe Mode, the Built-in Administrator account
is only shown IF there are no other Administrator accounts on the system.

What you are seeing indicates that the account shown on the Safe Mode login
screen IS an Administrator account.

When you login to Safe Mode with your Brothers account, go to Control Panel
/ User Accounts. Look at the account you are logged in with. Does it show:

<account name>
Administrator
Password Protected

Also, do you have a Vista Installation Disk?

Let me know.