Windows 8: Enable the hidden Administrator Account

Windows 8 just like its predecessor Windows 7 ships with an administrator account that is disabled by default. While it is not suggested to enable and use the administrators on a day to day basis, it can be used for a variety of purposes. One of the reasons is to use it as a fallback account in case you can’t log in to a regular user account, or for tasks that require administrative privileges.

When you list the accounts in the user accounts control panel applet, you will notice that the hidden administrator account is not listed there while the guest account that is also disabled is. It is easier to enable the administrator account if you can still log in to Windows with another administrator account.

You need to run the command from an elevated command prompt. To do that you need to do the following:

Press the Windows key to get into the Metro interface if you are not already there.Enter cmd and right-click on the Command Prompt result that should appear.This opens a list of options at the bottom. Select Run as administrator there.Accept the UAC prompt

Enter the following command to enable the hidden administrator account: net user administrator /active:yes

If you ever want to disable the account follow the same instructions, but run the following command instead: net user administrator /active:no

Once you have enabled the account, you will see it listed in the user accounts control panel applet. Note that the account has not assigned a password to it, and that you should consider setting one to improve account security.

If you have forgotten your account password and can’t log in to the system anymore, you may use the administrator account to get back into the system. Please note that it may be easier to request the password to be reset if you are using a Microsoft Account password to log in. You can for instance request that from a different system or your smartphone.

If you can’t sign in anymore you can still recover the system from that by enabling the hidden administrator account. The process itself requires you to download the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor which is available as an ISO image that you can burn to CD or DVD, and a file that you can install on an USB Flash Drive. You then need to boot from the selected device to see a DOS-like interface where you need to run a series of command in to restore the user account. Here are the steps that you need to complete:

First screen, press enter to continueSelect the hard drive that your Windows installation is installed on. This may take some time to get right depending on the number of partitions on the PC as it is using the “Linux-way” of listing the hard drives.You then need to enter the path to the Registry. I’d recommend to tap on enter to try the default path first which usually is detected correctly by the program.Press qSelect the Password Reset option (1)Enter Administrator as the user account that you want to modify.Select the unlock and enable user account option (4)Use ! and q to end the editing and save the values

Restart the PC and make sure you are booting from the operating system’s drive again. You should now see the administrator account listed on the sign in page. Select it to regain access to the system. From there, you can change other account passwords or run administrative tasks to restore access to the PC. (thanks Caschy)

Instead of enabling the hidden administrator account, you could as easily create a new user account with administrative privileges on the system. You could then use that account to log in if there is an emergency and you can’t sign in with your regular account anymore.

You also need to know that changing the password of a user account may have an impact on the files accessible to that account. This is especially true if encryption was used. If that is the case, the files may not be accessible anymore after the account password has been changed.

I’d generally recommend to create a second “regular” administrator account for the purpose of recovery than enabling the hidden administrator account. The core reason for this is that the hidden account has additional privileges that other administrator accounts do not have.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday June 11, 2012 -
Tags:administrator, windows tips

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Mentor FM Tunes Into Your Facebook Account To Play Music You Like

Mentor FM is one of those tools that it is pretty awesome and scary at the same time. The Internet radio tunes into your Facebook account to play music that you like. The awesome part is that it usually gets things pretty right in this regard. All you need to do is to give the app permissions to connect to your Facebook account before you can start listening to a playlist that has been specifically made for you.

The scary part is actually what makes the application that good: Facebook seems to know your music taste pretty well. The application displays up and down vote buttons on the radio page that you can use to further finetune the music listening experience.

Basic playback controls are displayed on the page as well. Here you can change the volume of the music, pause, stop and play songs or skip ahead to the next song if you do not really like the one that is currently playing.

Mentor.fm displays the artist or band, and the genre of the music on the page as well. It feels rather strange that the name of the song is not among the information displayed there.

If the playlist is not what you are looking for, you can let the radio station load a new playlist with different songs.

The surprise me mode finally lets you look beyond your music taste to discover a different kind of music. When I first used surprise me the radio started to play songs from artists such as Emilio Santiago, Jazzkantine or Renata Tebaldi, music that I would not listen to at all otherwise.

The site is a music experiment, that will be online for about 2 months before the makers will take it offline again. One of the interesting aspects of the site is that you can just turn on the radio and start listening, without having to perform searches or songs first. The service uses a user’s likes on Facebook and generates the playlist from those information. (via Freeware Genius)

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday January 17, 2012 -
Tags:internet-radio, music

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How To Add A New Email To Your Hotmail Account

When I signed up for my Hotmail email account I used a custom email address. As a consequence, I never received a “real” Hotmail email address. While I was able to create Hotmail aliases, I could not really use all the features associated with an account on the site as I used the third party mail address only to verify the account.

Yesterday I started to look into the issue more closely to figure out if there was an option to create a new Hotmail email address from within an existing account. It took some digging through Hotmail’s page layout to find the page where new email addresses can be added.

Open the Hotmail main page and sign into your Hotmail account if you are not already signed in. You should now see the inbox and the frontpage of the account.

Locate the Options link in the top right corner and select the more options link from the context menu. This opens the main account control panel where you can configure the majority of account related settings. Click on account details under managing your account. Hotmail may ask you to enter your account password again before the next page is displayed.

Click on the your email addresses link under other options. This opens a page listing all linked email addresses and aliases. A click on add an email address allows you to create a new Hotmail or Windows Live account, or to link a third party account to the Hotmail account.

Just enter a new account name and select whether you would like it to be a hotmail.com or live.com account.

The address is automatically added to the account and you can start using the account right away.

You can alternatively open the following link to create new Hotmail email addresses right away. This opens the mail overview page right away where you can add or remove email accounts.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter. Hotmail Introduces New Email Aliases Features
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Hotmail Watcher Notifies Of New Hotmail Emails In Firefox About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday January 16, 2012 -
Tags:email address, hotmail

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