How to become administrator on Windows 10?

Question

I want to become administrator(I mean super admin with all authority) on Windows 10.

I activated administrator account as below;

net user administrator /active:yes

But problem is I still got nearly no authority on Windows 10 files. I think administrator account is just a simple user account named "administrator".

I am trying to delete a file under;

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\0efe6e576f3de2a15e6fe0ba6da24f3a 

but problem is even Administrator has no authority.

Is there any admin account on Windows 10? I mean for example who can delete all files?

Answer 1

Any user that is a member of the built-in Administrators group (which includes the Administrator user you have activated) has full access to the computer.

I am trying to delete a file under;

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\0efe6e576f3de2a15e6fe0ba6da24f3a

but problem is even Administrator has no authority.

In order to delete a folder, you need the correct NTFS permissions on the object. In your case Administrators don't have the necessary permissions by default.

However, the story doesn't end there.

Administrators have a special user right which allows them to take ownership of any filesystem object, even if they don't have permission to the object. In turn, an object's owner can always change the permissions on the owned object, again, even if they don't have any permissions to it.

So for an Administrator that cannot access an object, the process looks like this:

1. Take ownership of object (right-click object> Properties> Security> Advanced> Ownership)
2. Grant himself the NTFS Full Control permission to the object (right-click object> Properties> Security> Edit)

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Caution: When Administrators aren't granted permission to files and folders by default, there's a good reason for that. Especially when it comes to system objects, exercise caution when changing permissions.

Answer 2

You can try to use the takeown command to take ownership of the object (file or directory) first as follows:

takeown /r C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\0efe6e576f3de2a15e6fe0ba6da24f3a 

It would take ownership recursively meaning applied to all subdirectories and files within, if any.

There's also a SS64 page about the command.

Also you might note the /a switch which gives ownership to the Administrators local group.

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Issue net localgroup administrators to learn more about the group.

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takeown is an external command, meaning it's actually an executable file residing in C:\Windows\System32 folder as takeown.exe.

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I assume %windir% and %systemroot% is C:\Windows.

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Which also makes %homedrive% and %systemdrive% C:.