How do I log in as Administrator in Windows 7?

Question

Yesterday, I used netplwiz to store my password. I'm the only user of my laptop so I thought entering my password everytime was a waste of time.

Somehow my user lost it's membership in the Administrator group and I cannot do anything anymore due to UAC.

How do I log in as Administrator so that I can add my user to Administrators group and then turn off UAC?

Answer 1

• Boot into Safe Mode.
• Once inside, enable the hidden Administrator Account following these steps.
• Boot normally and use the Administrator Account this time. Shouldn't be locked to SmartCard based security.
• From there disable SmartCard based security.

I'm unsure as to the last step as I never used these horrendous (allow me the subjectiveness) things. But shouldn't be much of a problem. Disabling the service permanently, and/or uninstalling any SmartCard device that may be installed under Device manager should do the trick.

More interesting however is trying to find out how you got SmartCard based security on your system from just using the Advanced User Accounts Control Panel. You got me curious.

Answer 2

You might try to boot in safe mode (F8 during boot).

If you can execute the following command-line it is supposed to turn off UAC (never tried it):

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Answer 3

I disabled the device in the Device Manager.