How to enable Administrator account in Vista

Posted on June 3, 2008 at 5:19 am

Need to logon as Administrator in Vista? Well first you need to enable the Administrator account! Annoying right? By default, Vista’s secure computing initiative decided that it would be best to disable the Administrator account in Vista so that malicious programs cannot run and take over your computer.

Actually, it’s a good security measure, it’s just annoying if you need to logon to the Administrator account. Luckily, it’s not very hard to enable the admin account in Vista, so here are the steps you need to take in order to get the Administrator account as an option on the Vista logon screen.

Enable Administrator Account in Vista

Step 1: First you need to click on the Start Menu and right click on Computer. From the context menu, choose Manage.

Step 2: In the left hand menu, expand Local User and Groups and then click on Users.

Step 3: Now right-click on the Administrator account and choose Properties. You’ll see a check box called “Account is disabled” that is checked.

Go ahead and un-check that box to enable the Administrator account in Vista! That’s it! If this didn’t work for some reason, post a comment and I can try to help. Enjoy!

[tags]vista enable administrator, enable administrator account vista, enable administrator in vista, windows vista enable administrator, vista enable admin[/tags]

» Filed Under Windows Vista

Comments

38 Responses to “How to enable Administrator account in Vista”

abhsihek said on : June 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 am

gud tip buddy…simple and neat.

**Juanito** said on : June 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Thanks, I use “net user administrator /active:yes” command.
Greetings

akishore said on : June 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm

Abhsihek – Thanks! I like the simple how-to guide every once in a while.

Juanito – Nice! I didn’t know that command! Does that enable the Vista administrator account?

David said on : June 17th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

I am doing all these steps but not getting the administrator icon after logging off

SURESH said on : July 7th, 2008 at 4:34 am

if i use this command i am getting and “:error message assces denied ”

“system error 05″

I use “net user administrator /active:yes”

how to rectify it please reply mee

i have limited user account only

ganesh chandra said on : July 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Thanks.

This works for Vista Ultimate. How about vista Home basic or Home Premium where there is no Local User access ?

You need to do in command prompt only (Start > Run > CMD).

Then type, “net user administrator /active“

kaka said on : July 18th, 2008 at 10:43 pm

I have Home Premium and there’s no Local users and groups-item in my Comp mgmt console!!!

Help?
Do I dare to do the cmd prompt thing?

ganesh chandra said on : July 19th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

yeah, command prompt works great.

Ceci said on : August 6th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

I didn’t have “Local Users and Groups” in the menu. Only Task Scheduler, Event Viewer, Shared Folders, Reliability and Performance, and Device Manager. I made myself Administrator (I thought) through the User Accounts.

However, suddenly I get “This program has been disabled” when I try to restore my desktop wallpaper. It tells me to contact the System Administrator. I found something about secpol.msc, but my computer is Home Basic and doesn’t have it.

Ganesh Chandra said on : August 7th, 2008 at 9:21 am

Ceci,

Only Vista Ultimate has Local Users and Groups in menu. Admin through User Account doesnt give your admin privileges.

You need to do in command prompt only (Start > Run > CMD).

Then type, net user administrator /active

rober henry said on : August 17th, 2008 at 3:56 am

well I wish it was that easy but not quite. unfortunately vista home premium defaults with the following CMD line

C:\users\robert henry\

in my case anyway. not to worry though the administrator account can be done in CMD and you can get rid of another pesky vista problem at the same time (UAC) yea the stupid little tingy that asks you every 5 seconds if you are sure you want to do what you are doing.

here is how you do it. open configeration utility (start search for msconfig there is only one thing there open it)
go to tools
look for the line that says disable UAC
click it
click launch at the bottom right of the screen
a CMD opens and at the top it says operation successful

on the new command line that is now there and is not linked to the local user account that you are logged in as type

net user administrator /active

hit enter and a confirmation comes up. you will need to restart the computer but when you do UAC is off and administrator is on. note that you will need to add a administrator password to the administrator account and under the disable button is the enable button if for some off reason you ever want to turn on UAC again

hope this is helpful

Craig said on : September 9th, 2008 at 9:10 am

I have tried to follow above guide but comp management does not provide me with Administrator in local users and groups. Can’t seem to locate them.

Thanks.

Greg said on : September 24th, 2008 at 3:58 am

If you receive message “error message access denied ”

“system error 05″ after “net user administrator” command ,

then try to logon as user who hasn’t got administrator permissions, use “run as” to turn on command line and type once again :
net user administrator /active:yes

leonel said on : September 26th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

What about if I have a limited account only? it doesn’t give me permission to active the account

Gareth said on : December 14th, 2008 at 9:20 am

I have the same problem…I do the above steps, but it still doesn’t show Local Users & Groups on the computer. Am I missing a step somewhere…I don’t get the confirmation though…is that the problem? I get something else!

Any advice?

Kela said on : December 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

I created the Admin account. The first time I tried to log on as admin, it was taking over 5 minutes to log on and the disk being used continuously. Is this normal? Does it take that long to log on the first time to prepare something? I turned off the laptop as it was taking so long and the disk spinning like a nut. Please let me know how long did it take for the admin user to logon the fist time in Vista. Thank you.

saurabh rehani said on : February 17th, 2009 at 1:23 am

Ok this may sound real stupid, i went into the reg files and added the special accounts key. After doing all that when I log on as an administrator, it starts to log on and then logs off. I further went ahead and deleted the password for the administrator account and made the other account a standard account.

Now the problem is that i am locked out of all the administrator previledges. Any one can help me in regaining the admins previledges? Also i have Windows Vista home premium, and i have tried activating admin account from CMD, but it gives me error 5.

Thanks

JG Vimalan said on : February 19th, 2009 at 5:01 am

I have Vista Business installed in my system.
I have three accounts.
Administrator (disabled)
Guest (disabled)
Vimalan (enabled). This account is not a member of administrator.

How do I enable my administrator account?
I know the password but, while trying to enable it, I get ‘Access denied’. What to do?

Please reply back to my email id.

Thanks in advance…

Daren said on : March 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm

for those of you with a hoome edition of vista, local users and groups is not available for that version. you have to use the cmd line function to enable the administrator account.

click on the vista icon at bottom left and then type ‘cmd” in the search bar. do not just press “enter”!! you have to hit CNTRL-SHIFT-ENTER. this way you will not get the “error 5″. next type or cut paste “net user administrator /active:yes”. it will confirm that the action was taken, next restart your computer and the administrator account should be visible at the login screen.

MBiker80 said on : March 8th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

Hello all:

For security reasons, you can’t enable “Administrator” account when you are logged in as a regular user. You must open the “command prompt” window as an Administrator.

1. Go to Vista Start Menu –> All Programs –> Accessories.

2. RIGHT-CLICK on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator.”

3. In “Command Prompt” window write: net user administrator /enable:yes

4. Restart. Or, go to Vista Start Menu –> Switch Users to see the new “Administrator” mode.

Enjoy!

Gordon B said on : May 29th, 2009 at 10:06 am

Worked great. Extremely helpful. Thank-you very much.

Luke said on : May 31st, 2009 at 4:14 pm

Please note that since UAC is turned off, I can’t get the elevated permissions. And since I’m a standard user, I cannot turn on UAC.

Yvonne D. said on : July 19th, 2009 at 1:07 am

I do not have a local users and group option to click on. I do not understand

Chris said on : August 26th, 2009 at 5:44 am

Thank you.. was struggling for a while.. this helped alot

Thanks again

Abdul said on : September 4th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

Hi, I’m using Vista’s Business Edition and I’ve been using my account as an administrator for a while, but than changed it to standard user as for precautions (so that I could use the main administrators account).

But now, I see that my main administrators account is disabled, and as I’m a standard account user, neither can I change my old account back to an administrator nor can I activate the administrator account..

I’m really stuck, hope y’all can help out. Thanks

Ben said on : September 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

Okay i have tryed all the steps. i am a guest account with admin rights and get the system error. i do not understand! help!

D. Pramanik said on : September 14th, 2009 at 12:12 am

I didn’t have “Local Users and Groups” in the menu. Only Task Scheduler, Event Viewer, Shared Folders, Reliability and Performance, and Device Manager, storage, service and application. I made myself Administrator (I thought) through the User Accounts. How to enable Administrator account in Vista. Please help me

Leodisxxx said on : September 16th, 2009 at 4:42 am

Thanks Darren worked great on vista home premium.

Daren said on : September 19th, 2009 at 2:36 am

the other way to see the ” Administrator ” account is to get you pc to start in safe mode (i believe) at that point you have to know the password if there is one, sometimes in the default config there is no password.

strongly suggest to not have the pc connected to the WWW. while you use that account, you will have complete power, but so will any intruders…

Jake Speyer said on : September 24th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

Alright so I’ve tried the active:yes command and this way. But whenever I do either, it says access is denied. I can get all the way to the point of where i click enable administrator account but then when I hit apply it says access is denied.

When doing active:yes, I’ve saved it as a .bat file, but when I try to run as an administrator, it runs and then stops and quits. Please help.

Sokun said on : September 27th, 2009 at 6:10 am

Hi,

I have a problem in accessing my computer now. Please help me or provide any solution as you can.

I have just changed my administrator account name from “sokun” to “Sokun” and then i enabled the guest account and set the password for it. I logged off and restarted, i can’t see my account logon screen now. It shows only one account which is the Guest account. So i can’t do anything with the guest account.

Thanks in advance!!!

3hogfans said on : September 29th, 2009 at 11:42 am

this works perfect!

for those of you with a hoome edition of vista, local users and groups is not available for that version. you have to use the cmd line function to enable the administrator account.

click on the vista icon at bottom left and then type ‘cmd” in the search bar. do not just press “enter”!! you have to hit CNTRL-SHIFT-ENTER. this way you will not get the “error 5″. next type or cut paste “net user administrator /active:yes”. it will confirm that the action was taken, next restart your computer and the administrator account should be visible at the login screen.

Brandy said on : October 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 pm

I’m trying to enable my friend’s administrator on Vista. When I type the command to enable the administrator account, instead of telling me that it’s completed successfully, it shows me this:

The syntax of this command is:

NET USER
[username [password | *] [options]] [/DOMAIN]
username {password | *} /ADD [options] [/DOMAIN]
username [/DELETE] [/DOMAIN]
username [/TIMES:{times | ALL}]

What does this mean? Can someone please offer me some assistance?

Would be much obliged and so would my friend.

ken said on : October 25th, 2009 at 7:27 pm

when I try to setup parental control in Vista, It pops up a screen asking for password, however it does not allow me to enter password.

Thanks in advance for help

David said on : October 27th, 2009 at 11:11 pm

I am using Vista 64bit home premium version. I ran into the same problem with the Administrator thing. I am not on a network though, I am standalone. I have tried various things to get the Administrator Account activated. Nothing seems to work. When I use the “net user administrator/enable:yes” I get a prompt for a different syntax. There is no confirmation that anything happened and I still don’t have admin access. Any suggestions?

Luke said on : November 17th, 2009 at 12:46 pm

Make a bootdisk to recover default admin and then enable your account again @ http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Luke said on : November 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

Make a bootdisk to enable default admin and then make your account admin @ http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

DAREN said on : November 17th, 2009 at 11:04 pm

Ken, you have to do a registry edit to solve your problem, google is you friend ” vista content/parental control ”

you must have an account with administrative rights.