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I deleted my admin account in Windows 7

Last response: in Windows 7
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I accidentally deleted my admin account and I have tried to open an elevated command window so I can try to “run as administrator.” The window that opens looks like it has a Norton Anti-Virus shield and says “User Account Control.” It says to enter the Admin password- but there is no area to put it in, and the only available option is “cancel.” I am not given the option to select “continue,” thus I cannot open a command prompt with elevated privileges.

In cmd.exe I have tried the runas command, to which I get the error 1327: Logon failure: user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords not allowed, logon hour restrictions, or a policy restriction has been enforced. However, I'm not using the computer during the restricted times. I may've deleted the password on the admin account when I started this mess- not sure anymore!

When I start in Safe Mode, I can see the Admin account and successfully log in w/ my password, but the Admin account is not a log-in option at normal start-up.

Help?

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I don't understand when you say you have deleted the account and then later you say deleted the password??? Is the account deleted or just the password was changed? These are two completely different things.

And how come you have hour restrictions on accounts? Home PC don't have that. Is it a business computer? In this case contact your IT services.

Because of that I have a feeling this could be a stolen computer, not sure if I should help you. We're not supposed to help with password reset and accessing other users accounts, this is against Forum rules.
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Windows 7 Expert

Unfortunately, we have no way of confirming your situation. Other than suggesting you may need to restore the system to factory defaults, or reload your operating system (and applications), assistance for hacking/cracking is not permitted here.

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Windows 7 Authority

You can try a system restore to an earlier date before you deleted the admin account. The thing is UAC will probably require an admin password to do this anyhow. You always need at least one administrator account to be able to do elevated access. This brings me to the next question... how did you delete the admin account if the account you were logged into wasn't already an admin account? If your account is an admin account, give it a password, then you should be ok. UAC requires an admin password.
  • Ocrap selected this answer as the solution

MC_K7 said:
I don't understand when you say you have deleted the account and then later you say deleted the password??? Is the account deleted or just the password was changed? These are two completely different things.

And how come you have hour restrictions on accounts? Home PC don't have that. Is it a business computer? In this case contact your IT services.

Because of that I have a feeling this could be a stolen computer, not sure if I should help you. We're not supposed to help with password reset and accessing other users accounts, this is against Forum rules.


Thank you for being cautious! No, it is mine. I set up a timed restriction so the boys in my house cannot access inappropriate sites while the rest of the house is sleeping. :) 

I tried to create a new user and make that one the admin, so we could use our regular account as a standard user (since it has all of our files, data, etc), and then I could just use the newly created account to change restrictions, since it requires a password. Here's how I sabotaged myself:

Under User Accounts, I changed the account type to standard instead of admin- which made it so that the new account and the regular account were both standard and there was no longer an admin account. When I realized that I couldn't change either one to admin I deleted the new admin account and now I'm stuck.

WHILE I'M AT IT... I'm open to instructions on how to get all the porn crap off of my hard-drive! Thanks for your help!



Onus said:
Unfortunately, we have no way of confirming your situation. Other than suggesting you may need to restore the system to factory defaults, or reload your operating system (and applications), assistance for hacking/cracking is not permitted here.


Thanks again for being cautious. I understand the liability here. Is there a way that I can un-do this in the safe mode, or un-delete the "new" admin account that I tried to make- which I can only access in safe mode?

If I restore the system to factory defaults, or reload the operating system and applications, will that delete the files and stuff that I have saved to the computer? I'm pretty unfamiliar with computer stuff (learned the earlier elevated command window/runas command info from studying a couple of microsoft help sites today!). I have no idea how to do this restore/reload suggestion. Do you have a site or link with instructions? Thanks again for the help!

For the porn, ensure that all your kids and your user accounts are limited to "User" rights. Never surf on an Admin account. Admin accounts are for installing new software, checking problems, spying on your kids and Windows updates ONLY.

Also, lock the internet security for your kids account to High. You can check thier cookies from the admin account if you want to see where they have been going.

If you reformat your drive when you reload windows all the nasty should be gone.

SUCCESS!!! I followed Hawkeye's suggestion to add a pw to the main user account, then I rebooted under Safe Mode, logged into the new admin account that I had somehow deleted. I changed the User Account Control Settings to a lower setting, and then I was able to access the user accounts to change the main user account back to Admin. Hooray!

Thanks for the porn feedback, groundrat- how do I "reformat the drive when you reload windows?"

Now back to my starting point... I'd like the main account that we've always used to be a standard user, so I'm going to try to create a new admin account which will only be for " installing new software, checking problems, spying on the kids and Windows updates." Then I'm going to lower this main account back to standard and hope that we can just use it like normal, with some parental controls in force.

THANK YOU to all of you for trying to help me out! I really appreciate your time, help, and expertise!!!

at the point you desigate the boot drive in the install process you can reformat the drive and install or remove any partitions.

Never installed Windows yourself?

You may need to make the existing account the admin, until you can create a new one.
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