Windows 7 - want full named admin account

Question

I want a full named admin account on Windows 7.

The default local administrators group is a limited account.

You can enable the hidden full administrator account, but I can't see how to rename it.

How can I get a full admin account on Windows 7 in my name.

(edit, the problem was that I couldn't write to some files on an external hard disk because of permissions)

Answer 1

You can rename the Administrator account in Local Security Policy. Type secpol.msc in the start menu, then navigate to:

Local Policies\Security Options\Accounts: Rename administrator account

The Administrator account is no more or less an administrator than your normal user account which is a member of Administrators. What governs your rights over the system is the local security policy (and NTFS permissions). Assuming you haven't made any changes to your local security policy, you may find a few things that Administrator is granted rights to that Administrators is not. Two particular policies you might be interested in are under Local Policies\Security Options:

User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account
User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode

If you disable these policies, then UAC is disabled for the Administrator account or Administrators group.

If you believe a member of Administrators is not really a full "administrator", then either you have a security policy in place causing this, or what you're looking to do is to disable UAC, which you can do either through Control Panel (easier and safer) or through Local Security Policy.

Answer 2

administrator is a built in account, you cannot rename it, add yourself a user and choose group options and select member of "administrators"

Answer 3

Sounds like an issue with UAC, not with the type of account or the tokens which can be issued to "the" administrator account versus any other member of "local admins".

If you want a user to have the priviledges associated with being an admin, then either turn off UAC (a bad idea generally) or run necessary programs using "Run as Administrator".

Local admins does not only give limited user rights, it provides a special token for members when you don't elevate your priviledges, so that any deny permissions applied anywhere to this group will still work, but you don't get the normal token to show you are a member. If you elevate, you get the admin tokens.

Use whoami /groups to see what groups you are a member of (and thereby which tokens you have been granted).