Windows 8 In Depth

Accessing the Real Administrator Account

In Windows NT, 2000, and XP, there was an account named Administrator that was, by definition, a Computer Administrator account. You may have noticed that it’s nowhere to be seen in Windows 8.

Actually, it’s still there, but hidden. There’s a good reason for this. It’s disabled by default and hidden on the Welcome screen and even in Safe Mode, and it requires no password to log on. This was done to provide a way to recover if you somehow manage to delete the last (other) Computer Administrator account from your computer. In this case, Windows will automatically enable the Administrator account so that you can log on (without having to remember a password) and re-create one or more Computer Administrator ...