User Account Glitch

This is regarding XP Home Edition. Besides the usual Administrator Account, I am the only other user. I am listed as the Computer Administrator and Owner.

I have an annoying problem occurring on a regular basis. Inspite the fact that I am an Administrator, and the account is allocated to these parameters, I could not download from the Corporate Windows Update or make any system wide changes because I must have Administrator Priviledges.

I have used Sys Restore, Recovery and Quick Format. I have also performed these functions without giving myself a name. But the problem continues to return; usually 2 to 3 days after one of the above functions.

I have called the computer manufacturer for assistance. But they only know 3 words. Namely...Restore....Recover......Reformat!
I can't be doing this every week. There must be life beyond setting up desktops! Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Frozen in the North

 

Goldstop - hopefully this will apply to XP Home. Only have XP Pro so can't be positive.

There should be an "administrators" group on your PC. Is your other user account a member of that group? If not, it should be.

If you log on as "administrator" can you do the things you need to do (just to make sure there isn't some sort of system problem)?

And BTW - it is usually good practice to have an administrator account that can do everything and a user account that is more limited. Not so easy to destroy your system that way. Been there and done that. Although with the excellent restore features in XP, you can recover from some really stupid stunts whereas you couldn't on earlier versions unless you were running go-back or something similar.