Fast ways to login as a local administrator on Windows 7 company computers

Question

I need to login to several windows 7 computers at work a day usually as local administrator. It can get tedious typing in the long username and password. What are the fast ways to login as local administrator?

Answer 1

I'd recommend a Yubikey, as long as you can keep it secure. The Yubikey is a one-time password generator (TOTP), but it has a second slot that lets you enter a custom string. So you can either type in your username, then press and hold the Yubikey for 2 seconds to have it type the static password that you program into it using the Customization Tool.

Also, the Yubikey is just awesome. And be careful with this - Employers like to terminate those that make stealing super user passwords easy.

I use a Yubikey Neo with the second slot for PART of a long, static password. I enter the first few characters of the password, then press and hold the button on my Yubikey Neo. It enters the next 30ish characters then types Enter.

On another note, I agree with @zoredache - Create an AD security group that gets local admin on all systems (if you are an admin but you aren't a member of "Domain Admins" on your primary account), then create a new user for yourself that is part of that group. An auto maker did the same thing years ago when I worked with their IT team - I had user.name as my primary account, $user.name in the Domain Admins group, and $$user.name in the Enterprise Admins group. Local login was not allowed on client machines using either $ or $$ accounts, but login to the servers was only allowed from those accounts. Interesting way to force admins to not be Domain Admins on their primary account, saving the network from issues if they get compromised.