Windows 10: How do I change the profile or account of the default login

When I first turn the PC on it attempts to login through what must be the default account held by Windows 10. That fails because the password doesn't match. So I'm at the login, I've forgotten the password. At the login screen there is a second user icon for which I do know the password. So I can login manually. This is OK but I want to login automatically.I figure I can delete the faulty login (if I knew the password) or make the second user icon the default profile or account. I'm not sure if this is a feature of my version of Windows 10 or not, but I haven't found anywhere within my system that enables me to reset my password. This has been frustrating. I've tried netplwiz but haven't had access to anything to make a change. I followed the TenForums Tutorial to guide me through the registry, where I looked at the ProfileList and although there were several profiles with S-1-5 type numbers there was only one profile which had a GUID long number. Apparently this means it is an active profile. I don't have enough confidence in this area to do anything with it. So, I'm hoping I can get some assistance to resolve this situation and hopefully be able to turn on the PC and have it login automatically and finish at the desktop.

:)

 

How do I change the default administrator account for the UAC elevation password prompt?

Unfortunately there is no way to accomplish this that I am aware of.

I checked registry and policies and don't see anyway to do this.

The UAC was designed so that when you try to make a change to your local windows settings by adding apps etc it defaults to the local admin account.

 

How do I change the default administrator account for the UAC elevation password prompt?

I have set the "User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode" security policy in secpol.msc to "Prompt for credentials" for security purposes so that even when a user is logged in as an administrator
they must type their password instead of simply consenting to the UAC prompt. The only problem is that when the built-in Administrator account is enabled the UAC elevation prompt ALWAYS defaults to that account instead of the currently logged in local administrator
account, requiring the user to click "More choices" then their name before being able to use their own password to elevate. When performing repetitive administrative tasks this quickly becomes very annoying. It was my understanding the UAC prompt should remember
the last user account used, however that does not seem to be the case. How can I make the UAC elevation prompt default to the currently logged in administrator instead of the built-in administrator account?

 

It sounds like you don't have access to an account with administrator privileges. Open a command prompt or powershell (Press Win + X to get the list where you will find Command Prompt or Powershell) and run:
net localgroup administrators

What accounts are listed under Administrators? Is one of those accounts one that you can log into?

For example, the accounts on my computer that are administrators are Administrator (which is disabled by default in Windows 10) and John:

Code: C:\Users\John>net localgroup administrators Alias name administrators Comment Administrators have complete and unrestricted access to the computer/domain Members ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Administrator John The command completed successfully.[/quote]

 

Hi NavyLCDR,
Thanks for the response. Our time zones makes for a delay in my response.
OK, I ran Command Prompt with the instructions you gave and it listed 2 Names, (unless the first one is a heading),
Administrator, like you said this one must be the one made by Windows 10, so maybe it is just the one?
David-Desktop

Now David-Desktop was the account where I mucked up the password, so Windows tries to login on this one but the password with this account is wrong, so it fails at the login. This is the account that Windows is supposed to login automatically (through unchecking the box in netplwiz). So I finish up at the login with a failed password. I can get in through using the PIN option, which is OK but not preferred. Then there is a second icon there at the login which I can select and enter the password which I do know for it, and that works. But this login must be the "Administrator" which was the other member in that list? I don't exactly know how this came about but it started out with me trying to rename the PC, instead of David-Desktop, this is where things became confusing, and I think mistakes were made.

I hope that a bit of background may have helped you know exactly what is going on with my PC. My goal/hope in all this is to be able to just login automatically when I turn the PC on and start doing stuff at the desktop. Thanks again.

 

I'm confused.... when you log in with a PIN, is it the David-Desktop account that is listed under Administrators? And do you know the password of that account?

 

Sorry to confuse you,

When the initial auto login fails, which I presume is the David-Desktop account, it offers me an alternative sign in option, the PIN, which I do remember, so I can get in that way.

Can I set the auto login to work on a PIN? I didn't think I could. The only other choice is to put in the password, which I can't remember.

When I'm at the login area, there are 2 icons down the bottom left hand corner. One of them is the default login, this is the David-Desktop login and I don't know the password for it.

The second icon is called "Dave" and I want it to be the default login because I know the password for it.

I'd also like to delete the David-Desktop profile, so there is only one login, but I'm not sure if the other login is an Admin account (the second icon). I went into netplwiz and David-Desktop is listed with Admin but the only other account shown there is HomeGroupUser, which doesn't have any Admin privilege, is this what the other icon called Dave is representing?

 

*** UPDATE ***

I just rebooted my PC and it didn't offer me the "PIN" option, but the account name in the username box is David-Desktop, so that is definitely the account that came up in Administrators search earlier. There were times when I clicked on "Sign in Options" that it did offer me the option of PIN but not this time.

As for the second icon that displays in that login area, I was able to supply it with a password and I can successfully login that way but I don't know much about this account, From the TenForums tutorial I looked at yesterday there looks to be only one active profile in ProfileList. I can't explain this second a/c other than I've accidentally created it, I know the password, but it doesn't seem to have any Admin properties. But I can login with it.

 

If you open a command prompt again and run:
net users

Code: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063] (c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Users\John>net users User accounts for \\JOHN-LAPTOP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Administrator DefaultAccount Guest John The command completed successfully.[/quote] Administrator is the built-in Administrator account which is usually disabled by default. You can enable it with some registry hacking if you are not logged into an account with administrator rights. By default it has a blank password. We will get how to hack the registry in a minute.

DefaultAccount is an account you can't really log into. It just contains the template that is used when you create a new account.

Guest is an account that is also disabled by default. It is a very limited user - even more limited than a regular standard non-administrator user.

Any accounts other than those are user accounts that were created on the computer. So John is the only user account I have actually created on my computer.

In the command prompt you can run the command:
net user <username> (put a specific account name in place of <username>)

The last section of the user report will tell you if that account is part of the Administrators group or not:
Code: C:\Users\John>net user John User name John Full Name John <redacted> Comment User's comment Country/region code 000 (System Default) Account active Yes Account expires Never Password last set 9/30/2016 6:55:07 AM Password expires Never Password changeable 9/30/2016 6:55:07 AM Password required No User may change password Yes Workstations allowed All Logon script User profile Home directory Last logon 10/1/2016 8:58:13 PM Logon hours allowed All Local Group Memberships *Administrators Global Group memberships *None The command completed successfully.[/quote] If the account you can log into is not in the Administrators group, then you will have to enable the built-in administrator account, log into that and fix your normal user accounts. You need a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive or DVD to boot the computer from and use option 4 here:
Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10 - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

 

Now I'm confused.
I ran command prompt net users and it displayed (Please let me know how to copy the cmd prompt output into that embedded code window), it showed:
User accounts for \\Dave
Administrator David-Desktop DefaultAccount
Guest

I then tried net user Dave
and it said username could not be found

I then tried net user David-Desktop and it came out with quite a lot of information very similar to yours. Command prompt doesn't let me copy and paste so I'd like to put all that info into this post. Anyway things it does say are,

User name David-Desktop
Full name Dave
Active account Yes
Account expires Never
Password last set 18-Apr-2017 3:30pm - (That's when things started to go wrong).
Password expires Never
Local group memberships Administrators HomeUsers
Performance Log Users
That's about it.
What is the "wash-up" from all this?
I'll make another post shortly.

 

Dave and Dave-Desktop appear to be the same user account. You can login in with a PIN. And it is an administrator. So, this is what I would do before you manage to lock yourself out...

Create a temp local account:
Add User Account in Windows 10 - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

Change that temporary local account to an administrator:
Change Account Type in Windows 10 - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials

Log in to the temp local account you created, and run: netplwiz

In netplwiz you should be able to reset the password on the Dave-Desktop account.

 

In regards to your previous post where you recommended I read, Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10 - Windows 10 User Accounts Tutorials
In that tutorial it wants me to boot from a Windows 10 installation USB or recovery drive (whatever that is). I don't have a Windows 10 installation USB, I have my DVD that came with the PC when I bought it, how do I make this USB? It recommends I have an 8GB, which I do have so that's cool.

Weighing up my options, and looking at the other tutorials you've recommended, I'm beginning to think it's quite a job ahead. Maybe I'd be better off simply re-installing Windows from scratch and pay more attention to what I'm doing regarding User A/cs. I certainly don't want this problem to happen again, what do you think? I would respect your opinion on this.

I don't know if I'm overstating what's ahead of me here. But I recognise you've put a lot of time and energy into trying to help me, which I'm very grateful for. I'll look into what is involved with making the USB (I don't know how to make one). I'll make another post later tonight (my time). Thanks.*Smile

 

I followed the instructions you gave in your last post. I created a new user and upgraded it to administrator, I then logged out and logged back in as the new user. I ran netplwiz and in that dialog David-Desktop is highlighted and I tried clicking on the other account but the focus didn't move, it is as though it is frozen on David-Desktop and that's how it is. All the other buttons are greyed out, can't do anything. Frozen is the best description for it. That's about it for me at the moment. I'll check in later.

 

Well, now you have a known good user account that is an administrator that you know all the passwords to, correct? Go back to netplwiz and uncheck the box for "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Click apply. On the next window that appears, click cancel. Then on the netplwiz main windows, the check box will be checked again, click apply again with it checked. That tends to reset the Windows logon screen to remove any "ghost" users that appear on it.

Now you should be able to go to the C:\Users folder and go into whatever other users folders are there and copy out the documents, photos, and whatever files you want to keep from them. When you first click on one of the other users folders it will tell you that you need to gain access. Click yes or OK or whatever and it will take a couple minutes for it to change all the permissions and let you in.

Once you are sure you have what you want from the other user folders, the you can go to settings, accounts, family and other people, and hopefully delete the messed up user accounts in there. After doing that, go back to the C:\Users folders and if the deleted user folder under there did not delete, you can delete it.

At some point it looks like the old user account Dave-Desktop or Dave was a local account switched to a Microsoft Account login. It looks like what you forgot was the password for the local account that was first there after it was switched to a Microsoft Account login.

 

I read your post and I need some further detail. I have the newly created admin user, but when I went into it yesterday it was like none of my desktop shortcuts, themes, other stuff. Would those things be in David-Desktop?

I've just been into netplwiz and the David-Desktop was still frozen and the "Users must enter ..." check box was unchecked, so I checked it and that unfroze the interface. I then selected the newly created admin user and unchecked the "Users must ..." box. It stayed with that user selected. Would that mean it will auto-login with with the new users password?

So copying the folders from David-Desktop (I haven't done this yet) to the new admin users folder would it set up the desktop how I had it before this all started? And if the new a/c works OK, then delete David-Desktop, sadly.