ITauthor

Windows always has an account called Administrator that is similar to root on a UNIX machine. Note: this special account has higher privileges than a normal administrator account (i.e. an account that belongs to the Administrators group) and sometimes you need to run programs as Administrator. Annoyingly, on Vista, the right-click menu option "Run as administrator" actually means "Run as an administrator" not "Run as the Administrator user". My colleague Colin Paterson has written a very useful application that allows you to actually run programs as Administrator. But first you've got to know Administrator's password.

By default you don't get to see the Administrator account in the Manage Accounts window, so you can't set the password for Administrator. So first up you've got to show this hidden account. Doing any of this assumes that you're logged on to the PC as a local administrator.

To show the hidden Administrator account:

1. In the search box on the Start menu, enter:
   cmd
2. Right-click cmd.exe in the list that is displayed.
3. Choose Run as administrator.
4. In the command console, enter:
   net user administrator /active:yes

That's it, your done. Refresh the Manage Accounts window and the Administrator account will show up. Now you can select it and set its password.