Lost Administrator in Win 7 Pro

[OnOff]

As a favour I looked at someone's Windows 7 Professional SP1 pc.....wished I hadn't!

The problem was they had two user accounts; "Jane" without admin rights and "Administrator" but no password for it. She wants to install new programs which she can't under "Jane".  When it booted up originally there was the user options of "Jane" or "Administrator".

So I booted up from an Ubuntu 12.04LTS live disc and installed chntpw under the live environment. I thought I had removed the admin password. BUT.....on booting up Windows now only "Jane" exists. There's no sign of "Administrator" anywhere, not even in Safe Mode! Somehow I've 'effed it up!

Any thoughts?

Cheers

 

[Blue Duck]

Sorry...

what I would do....

copy c: then reinstall bindows put back everything where it was.

there may be another way but I'm no longer possessed of the thought processes that are required to operate windows.

 

[ProDave]

Some will say I live dangerously, buy my one and only user account on my pc is an administrator.

It's my own PC so why not?  I can understand having a limited user account in an office when you don't want the staff to mess it up, but on your own pc I can't see the point.

 

[OnOff]

Oh.....and I can't for some reason even get to a restore point without Admin rights.....

 

[septiclecky]

Oh dear what have you done?

 

[Marvo]

You can try running this reg edit but do so only as a last resort and at your own risk. It's the software equivalent of the hammer shown a couple of posts above.

Place the text file on the desktop of the WIN7 PC, change the file extension from '.txt' to '.reg' then double click to run it. Good luck.

View attachment GrantFullAdminPrivileges.txt.

Keep a copy of the txt file because if you want to remove the changes later you'll have to manually remove the registry keys using the registry editor or cc cleaner or similar.

 

[OnOff]

Cheers. Marvo's "registry bomb" looks a bit scary! Guess it's a case of back everything up first!

The Hirens one, have downloaded for future use thanks but it's not that I need to get rid of the Admin password.....I've done that but also lost the Admin account.

 

[steptoe]

Have you tried going back in using a Ubuntu disc and looking to see if it's just hidden it,? 

Remember, windows never actually deletes anything, it only overwrites it with other stuff,!

 

[OnOff]

Have you tried going back in using a Ubuntu disc and looking to see if it's just hidden it,? 

Remember, windows never actually deletes anything, it only overwrites it with other stuff,!

No.....didn't know you could do that. Could I "un hide" it with an Ubuntu disc?

Just create a new admin account that wont have admin privileges, run Hiren and turn it into an admin account

Or do you mean you want to recover the old admin accounts files ?

Not sure the ability remained to create a new Admin account. You mean just create an account, call it Admin THEM actually make it Admin?

I blanked the Admin password successfully a couple of months ago as there were photos in there she wanted. But someone changed it.....

 

[OnOff]

yes or if you have an existing account - make it an admin then create a new one as admin and then put the old one back to a user

Think I have the gist.....run Hiren and make the existing one an Admin one. The problem is I guess, where is the old Admin one now?