Vista no enabled user in administrators group??

I was trying to help someone resolve a problem on their newer Dell computer
today with Vista Home Premium installed. The user was having problems with
Peachtree and up to a short time everything worked fine. The computer still
works well as long as the user does not try to do anything that needs
administrator priviliges.

After a short spin using it I thought something was odd. To my surprise I
ran the command net localgroup administrators and only the built in
administrator account was in it and net user administrator showed that it
was disabled leaving no user having administrator access to the computer.
Trying to open command prompt via run as administrator and running commands
like net user administrator /active:yes, or net localgroup administrators
user /add failed with access denied messages.

I tried booting using PE type disk and copying the registry files from
\windows\system32\config\regback to \windows\system32\config but that did
not work and using the NT offline password reset disk also did not work. It
did find the administrator account and was able to enable it and reset the
password but then when I tried to save the changes I got the error that
could not write to sam. Checking permissions to registry keys and registry
folders/files looked normal. Tried logging on as administrator in Safe Mode
though I did not really expect that to work and it did not nor would command
line commands work as administrator. Someone recommended checking a registry
key for filteradministratortoken and that was set to 0 as recommended. MMC
snapins for local users and groups does not work in Vista Home Premium
though If it did I would not expect any success there either.

The user has all her data backed up and can still backup other data but I
was trying to avoid doing a recovery to factory installed level. I don't
have a Vista OEM disk so I can not try to do a repair install.

Anyone else seen this before and if so had any luck trying to enable the
built in administrator account when it was the ONLY account in the
administrators group and was disabled??

Thanks Steve

Thanks a bunch Kerry as that looks very promising. I have a TechNet version
of Vista on DVD. Offhand do you know if that would work??

Thanks again, Steve


"Kerry Brown" <kerry.RemoveThis@kdbNOSPAMsys-tems.c*a*m> wrote in message
news:A391608D-3B42-41C9-A62D-7482B6BD82B9@microsoft.com...
> "Steve" <noway.RemoveThis@nowhere.net> wrote in message
> news:u5AgcWkBIHA.4200@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>I was trying to help someone resolve a problem on their newer Dell
>>computer today with Vista Home Premium installed. The user was having
>>problems with Peachtree and up to a short time everything worked fine. The
>>computer still works well as long as the user does not try to do anything
>>that needs administrator priviliges.
>>
>> After a short spin using it I thought something was odd. To my surprise I
>> ran the command net localgroup administrators and only the built in
>> administrator account was in it and net user administrator showed that it
>> was disabled leaving no user having administrator access to the computer.
>> Trying to open command prompt via run as administrator and running
>> commands like net user administrator /active:yes, or net localgroup
>> administrators user /add failed with access denied messages.
>>
>> I tried booting using PE type disk and copying the registry files from
>> \windows\system32\config\regback to \windows\system32\config but that did
>> not work and using the NT offline password reset disk also did not work.
>> It did find the administrator account and was able to enable it and reset
>> the password but then when I tried to save the changes I got the error
>> that could not write to sam. Checking permissions to registry keys and
>> registry folders/files looked normal. Tried logging on as administrator
>> in Safe Mode though I did not really expect that to work and it did not
>> nor would command line commands work as administrator. Someone
>> recommended checking a registry key for filteradministratortoken and that
>> was set to 0 as recommended. MMC snapins for local users and groups does
>> not work in Vista Home Premium though If it did I would not expect any
>> success there either.
>>
>> The user has all her data backed up and can still backup other data but I
>> was trying to avoid doing a recovery to factory installed level. I don't
>> have a Vista OEM disk so I can not try to do a repair install.
>>
>> Anyone else seen this before and if so had any luck trying to enable the
>> built in administrator account when it was the ONLY account in the
>> administrators group and was disabled??
>>
>
>
> Do you have any Vista DVD that you can boot from? MVP Jimmy Brush has
> created a small program to fix this but you need a DVD to boot from. Some
> OEM computers have an option on the F8 bootup screen to access the Vista
> repair options. This may suffice.
>
> http://www.jimmah.com/vista/Administration/locked_out_of_admin.aspx
>
> --
> Kerry Brown
> Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
> http://www.vistahelp.ca
>
>