Hello everyoneI am desperate here. I have done something really stupid and I fear I have locked myself out of some folders that I MUST have access to.Here is the situation. I often have people over that use my computer for various purposes. Wanting to control access to certain folders, I changed the security permissions on several folders containing private information to only "Administrators" and "SYSTEM". Then I password protected these folders. Thinking that if I were to CHANGE MY ACCOUNT TYPE to a "POWER USER" if I then wanted access to these folders, Windows would ask me for the password. Well I was wrong! Horribly so! I changed my account to a power user and now I cannot access these folders. Even more of a problem is the fact that the ADMINISTRATOR account is NOT ACTIVE!!I have tried EVERYTHING under the sun to activate the Administrator account, all with the same result: ACCESS DENIED!So right now I am pretty royally skrewed. There is literally no administator account on this computer, and I have no way of activating it.Here is what I've tried so far:- Activating Admin account through normal means (Local users and groups). Access Denied.- Running CMD as Administator and using the NET USER commands. Access Denied.- Running REGEDIT and trying to add keys to the HKLM WINLOGON directory. Access Denied.- Creating a new user and trying to add it to the Administrators group. Access Denied.Does anyone have ANY ideas out there that can help me get access back to those folders? Or even better to help me get access as an administrator?? I know I never should have done all that in the first place, but I am new to Vista and didn't know that the Administrator account was disabled by default! Doh! Please help if you can!

If you have removed the last Administrator account on the computer, you should be able to boot into Safe Mode to access the Built-in Administrator account. Here's how. Restart the computer. As soon as the system starts to reboot, press and hold the F8 Key until you a black screen menu appear. Select the Safe Mode option and press the ENTER Key. When the login screen appears, you should see the Administrator account there. This account does not have a password associated with it, by default. Select this account and press ENTER. When Vista starts in Safe Mode, go to Control Panel/User Accounts and change your account back to an Administrator account. Reboot normally. ---------------------------------- Ronnie Vernon Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience

windows 7 does not show the admin account on boot up, regardless if normal mode or safe mode. The UAC pops up telling you to sign in as administrator, but gives you no username or password field to fill in. Windows 7 professional. Login screen is ctrl + alt +del, and when pressed only shows the power user account.

Just had a similar problem. [Apparently I must have deleted my Admin account after cancelling a sysprep procedure]. In any case this could help someone with a similar problem, say your Windows 7 "does not show the Admin on/after boot up". Restart the machine in safe mode [restart, then hold F8 Key. Select Safe Mode with Networking] and go to User Accounts and select to add "New User", enter the initial admin name or id you used on initial account setup when you installed win 7, save and restart the machine. This will only work if you remember the Admin[strator] name you used. This should then go straight to your main Windows page when you restart the machine. Tips and Tricks, and hoep this works for you... Andrew

Enable / Disable the Local (Hidden, Built-In) Administrator Account in Windows 7 Many people familiar with prior versions of Windows are curious what happened to the built-in Administrator account that was always created by default. Does this account still exist, and how can you access it? How to Reset Windows 7 Password if you forget it?