Tweak Mode

The Vista Built-in Super Administrator Account Has Survived in Vista SP1

Of course!

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

15th of February 2008, 10:01 GMT

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Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is designed to evolve the RTM version of the latest Windows client from Microsoft, made available in November 2006 to business customers, and in January 2007 to the general consumers. Essentially, Vista SP1 is not a repeat of Windows XP Sp2, and outside of minor changes to the fabric of the operating system such as an overhauled

Desktop Search mechanism, support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and kernel tweaks designed to bypass the PatchGuard (Kernel Patch Protection) security mitigation, the original architecture of Vista RTM remains unchanged.

In this context, the built-in super administrator account in Vista has survived to the first service pack. "In Windows Vista, the built-in administrator account is disabled by default. In previous versions of Windows, an Administrator account was automatically created during Out-of-Box-Experience (OOBE) with a blank password. An Administrator account with a blank password is a security risk. To better protect the system, the built-in Administrator account is disabled by default in all clean installations and upgrades of Windows Vista," Microsoft informed.

And yes, even in Vista SP1 the default Administrator account is disabled. But enabling it is a simple task. Enter "cmd" in the search box under the Start menu and press CTRL SHIFT Enter to launch the command prompt with administrative privileges. Alternatively, you can also right-click the highlighted result and choose the "Run as administrator" option. Now, there is a simple command that you must type, namely "net user administrator /active:yes" without the inverted commas. In order to disable it, enter "net user administrator /active:no". Just hit Enter after each command and you're all set.

What does the built-in Administrator account do? Well, remember the good old days in Windows XP when you could run as the absolute administrator? Want to relive them in Vista SP1? Now you can! "For upgrade installations, the built-in Administrator account is kept enabled when there is no other active local Administrator on the computer. However, the built-in Administrator account is disabled by default for new installations and upgrades on domain-joined computers, regardless of whether there are other active local Administrators on the domain-joined computers," Microsoft added.

TAGS:

Windows Vista | SP1 | built-in administrator

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