Resolved Win7 Admin Privledges Down Graded

Hello Everyone

I have a problem with Windows7 Upgrade.
This past weekend I installed Windows 7 over my running Vista system. All seemed to go okay until I needed to do something that took admin privledges. Prior to the upgrade there were two users on the system, myself and my wife. Both had administrator rights, which worked just fine.

On the current User Account settings both of us are listed as standard users. As such I cannot upgrade to Administer status for either of us as we do not have Admin status. Even tried turning off UAC by moving slider to the bottom but that didn't work.

I have googled the h*** out of this subject and have not found an answer to this and wonder if anyone out there has had this happen and what they did to repair the "damage ".

 

Im sure you would have tried this.

But have you restarted in safe mode and see if you can access the built in administrator account from there?

Some people have said that the built in admin account can appear hidden.

If you hold down shift and right click a program you can use the run as command.

Tap in Administrator for the user and whatever password you set for that account. Could be blank but you would know this as you installed the os.

I would recommend using the above method with the cmd app and then re-enabling / unhiding the administrator account with the following command.

net user administrator /active:yes

I have seen a few things on the internet of people having this problem with Windows 7 and most people have given up and reloaded.

Im not incredibly well up with Windows 7 as it is fairly new to me.

Let us know how you get on!

Tom

 

Thank you both for your suggestions. Unfortunetly I am running Home Premium and these suggestions seem to work only for Pro and Ultimate.

Any other suggestions, including reload (sigh) would be greatly appreciated

 

Thank you all again. Once I figured out that an elevated command prompt was all went smoothly except for one thing.

Logged on as Admin and attempted to give the two old accounts admin privledges but the button greyed out as soon as I selected it. Is that normal or am I missing something?

 

Default value, second from top

 

If you had these problems, I would recommend the bullet and clean install too.

Since I did the update rather than the clean install, can I get away with s repair instead of a clean install?

 

Well, you were right. The update DVD does not offer a repair. I went ahead and re-updated W7 and got through the whole thing and the Admin still cannot update type, nor does the type hold when a new account is created.

I may not have made myself clear, I bought Vista for the free W7 update so I don't have a full install copy of W7 handy.

I'm not willing to start from scratch but I do have another partition with Vista on it. I'll try updating that and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help folks.

 

Me too, but everyone who responded was very helpful as I did learn some new stuff.

Now, the 64 cent question, can Windows 7 Easy Transfer be used between partitions?
Last ditch attempt at not having to re=install everything

 

I had similar problems setting my user account to admin. I left it on standard and clicked on change account type then changed it to admin and the button lit up to change account type. I clicked then and successfully changed the account type to admin. Am running win7 Pro 64bit.

 

Final Response,

Unfortunately that didn't work. Got a response from another source, which was that I should have shut off UAC in Vista before updating. Since I keep everything on another partition I went ahead and reinstalled Vista and turned of UAC. I then updated to Win7 and all is now working as it should.

Thanks to all who responded