Re: Administrator account

From: Jbob (nobody_at_SpamCox.net)
Date: 08/08/04

  • Next message: Ant: "Re: cmioj esiuof SAFEBOOT SOLO IS DISCONTINUED: CONTROL BREAK INTERQ" 
    Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 09:41:29 -0500

    "Tim Lister" <t.lister4NoSpam@ntlworldNoSpamPlease.com> wrote in message
    news:G9TQc.398$hm1.65@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
    > Whilst I'm here, could I also pick your brains about the admin
    > account on XP. I have a few other users on my stand alone machine &
    > obviously my account is set up as the admin account, but when I boot
    > into safe mode, I'm presented with another account to mine, labelled
    > Administrator & with its own password! Why is this hidden admin account
    > present & again, are there any security implications in having it?
    > Thanks in advance again!

    I think this was one of MS's ideas at fixing a big problem with the NT based
    OS's. Many people simply used the default user acount(which also happened
    to be the Admin account) as their normal account. The problem with this is
    is for some reason they lose the password or the account becomes corrupted
    somehow there are very few ways to get back into the OS to fix it short of a
    reload. MS decided to hide the default admin account so it was only seen
    during a Safe Boot in Windows XP. This way you had to create a normal user
    acount for yourself while still preserving the default Admin account. Most
    system admins always maintain 2 admin accounts in case one gets hosed. You
    can adjust the registry to show this during normal boot as well or use the
    Powertoys utility to set it to show. FWIW your admin accounts should have
    fairly hard passwords or at the very least all the accounts that have full
    admin rights.

  • Next message: Ant: "Re: cmioj esiuof SAFEBOOT SOLO IS DISCONTINUED: CONTROL BREAK INTERQ"

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