Where is Administrator?

[Larry Lindstrom]

Hi Folks:

I'm upgrading from XP Home to XP Pro. I'm installing from a brand
new XP Pro SP3 CD from Newegg a couple of days ago.

While installing, the user "administrator" was created for me.
Things seemed to be going fine.

Then I created an account of my own, "larryl". I was going to try
having no admin privledge on this account and do all administrative
stuff as administrator.

I noticed an odd thing when creating larryl. I was informed that I
needed at least one account with administrator privileges. I could
see Administrator was there. But I went ahead and gave larryl
administrative privileges, because I wasn't given a choice.

Now the new install is well along, but I'd like to move some files
created by administrator to a different location. I go to log in as
administrator, but there isn't an administrator account displyed.
Just "larryl".

Clickinig on Control Panel's "User Accounts" brings up a window
with two accounts, "larryl" and "Guest", guest account is off.

If I try to create an account by the name of administrator, I'm
informed that "An account named 'administrator' already exists. Type
a different name".

What's going on? How do I get Administrator in a state where I can
log into that account?

Thanks
Larry

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm upgrading from XP Home to XP Pro. I'm installing from a brand
new XP Pro SP3 CD from Newegg a couple of days ago.

While installing, the user "administrator" was created for me.
Things seemed to be going fine.

Then I created an account of my own, "larryl". I was going to try
having no admin privledge on this account and do all administrative
stuff as administrator.

I noticed an odd thing when creating larryl. I was informed that
I needed at least one account with administrator privileges. I
could see Administrator was there. But I went ahead and gave larryl
administrative privileges, because I wasn't given a choice.

Now the new install is well along, but I'd like to move some files
created by administrator to a different location. I go to log in as
administrator, but there isn't an administrator account displyed.
Just "larryl".

Clickinig on Control Panel's "User Accounts" brings up a window
with two accounts, "larryl" and "Guest", guest account is off.

If I try to create an account by the name of administrator, I'm
informed that "An account named 'administrator' already exists.
Type a different name".

What's going on? How do I get Administrator in a state where I
can log into that account?

Everything you asked about is generally well documented. ;-)

1) You should have one account other than the built-in administrator account
with administrative rights.
(and all accounts should have strong passwords.)

2) When you create a new account (other than the built-in Windows
"administrator" account) in Windows XP - and you use the "Welcome Screen"
logon - the "administrator account disappears from visibility on the
"Welcome Screen".

3) In Windows XP Professional (using the 'welcome screen' logon method) you
merely need to press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice at the welcome screen to get the
classic logon screen and logon as the user 'administrator' by typiong in the
name.

You can use a registry edit or TweakUI to make the change for you to display
the "Administrator" account on the "Welcome Screen" logon.

 

[JS]

Try Power Toy's Tweak UI from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Install, run and under Logon you will find check boxes to select the
accounts you want displayed and in the Autologon you can choose to
Enable/Disable it by Checking or un-checking the 'Logon automatically'
option.

TweakUI is a very useful tool and is relatively safe for most users as they
don't need to use the registry editor or other less obvious methods to make
changes to Windows.

More Detail on available features in Tweak UI:
http://www.winxpsolution.com/Tweakuixppro.aspx

 

[Larry Lindstrom]

Everything you asked about is generally well documented.  ;-)

Thanks Shenan and JS:

The behavior struck me as so odd, I couldn't think of a proper
query of Google's archievs to resolve this on my own.

1) You should have one account other than the built-in administrator account
with administrative rights.
  (and all accounts should have strong passwords.)

What is accomplished by this requirement?

2) When you create a new account (other than the built-in Windows
"administrator" account) in Windows XP - and you use the "Welcome Screen"
logon - the "administrator account disappears from visibility on the
"Welcome Screen".

My XP Home install had a privileged "larryl" and an "administrator"
account, both visible on Windows startup.

What is the motivation for this?

3) In Windows XP Professional (using the 'welcome screen' logon method) you
merely need to press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice at the welcome screen to get the
classic logon screen and logon as the user 'administrator' by typiong in the
name.

You can use a registry edit or TweakUI to make the change for you to display
the "Administrator" account on the "Welcome Screen" logon.

I don't need to change anything, now that I know how things work.

I'm having trouble imagining a universe where there is some
advantage to doing things this way.

Do you continue to use "administrator" for administrative tasks?
Is your second administrative account the same one you use to do your
daily work? As a Unix user I was going to try to avoid that. .

I'm very grateful for the efforts the two of you made to help me.

Thanks
Larry

 

[JS]

You should have two accounts with Admin privileges.
The one named "Administrator" which you do not use
unless absolutely necessary and a second account for
every day use. Both should be password protected.

UNIX is another animal as you know when you log
on as "Root" or use "SU". One RM *.* -r -f and your
up the creek.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com

Everything you asked about is generally well documented. ;-)

Thanks Shenan and JS:

The behavior struck me as so odd, I couldn't think of a proper
query of Google's archievs to resolve this on my own.

1) You should have one account other than the built-in administrator
account
with administrative rights.
(and all accounts should have strong passwords.)

What is accomplished by this requirement?

2) When you create a new account (other than the built-in Windows
"administrator" account) in Windows XP - and you use the "Welcome Screen"
logon - the "administrator account disappears from visibility on the
"Welcome Screen".

My XP Home install had a privileged "larryl" and an "administrator"
account, both visible on Windows startup.

What is the motivation for this?

3) In Windows XP Professional (using the 'welcome screen' logon method)
you
merely need to press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice at the welcome screen to get the
classic logon screen and logon as the user 'administrator' by typiong in
the
name.

You can use a registry edit or TweakUI to make the change for you to
display
the "Administrator" account on the "Welcome Screen" logon.

I don't need to change anything, now that I know how things work.

I'm having trouble imagining a universe where there is some
advantage to doing things this way.

Do you continue to use "administrator" for administrative tasks?
Is your second administrative account the same one you use to do your
daily work? As a Unix user I was going to try to avoid that. .

I'm very grateful for the efforts the two of you made to help me.

Thanks
Larry

 

[Shenan Stanley]

<Inline and at the end>

What is accomplished by this requirement?

An intelligent setup. A secondary way into the machine should things go
awry. A second administrative account in case the first one is rendered
inoperable. Etc. I did not call it a 'requirement' - just said 'should'.

My XP Home install had a privileged "larryl" and an
"administrator" account, both visible on Windows startup.

What is the motivation for this?

If your Windows XP had the built-in administrator visible - it was
hacked/modified from default behavior. Windows XP Home - default - doesn't
allow you to utilize the built-in administrator account other than through
safe mode (or by a hack.)

I don't need to change anything, now that I know how things work.

I'm having trouble imagining a universe where there is some
advantage to doing things this way.

Do you continue to use "administrator" for administrative tasks?
Is your second administrative account the same one you use to do
your daily work? As a Unix user I was going to try to avoid that.

I'm very grateful for the efforts the two of you made to help me.

No - I do not use the administrator or my other administrative account for
daily use.
I use either account for administrative tasks - as it does not matter.

Advantage - depends on what you need. Disadvantage? Depends on what you
need.

In any case - physical access to the machine, a little time/space and if
there is no file encryption in place of some sort - it doesn't nmatter if
you have one or 50 administrator accounts with strong passwords - everything
on it can be gotten to.

The extra administrator account is just a wise move IMHO. Make one (extra
account), use it only if needed to install/etc. Leave the built in
admiistrator with some different password (extra strong and stored someplace
you can get to in a dire emergency - which could be your mind - but better
if it is a safe or something) alone completely.

http://www.google.com/search?q=why+two+administrator+accounts+in+Windows+XP

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm