Windows 10: Locked and hidden administrator.

Oh. I didn't realize. I will try it first thing tomorrow morning (9 hours from now) and I'll get back to you.

Thanks.

 

Ok. I got it, finally. It seems to have worked just fine. It unlocked the dialog box that usually tells me ''To continue, type the administrator password, and then click Yes.'' But now the boxes are open for user name and password and the Yes button is active. That's a great relief. However, I cannot remember either my user name or password. Are there any other pages hidden off from common user exploring that might reveal such information? Or can new ones be made and accepted?
Very many thanks.

 

Great news, hopefully your built in Admin account is now active. The user name will be Administrator and the password will be empty, just hit the enter key, unless you set up a password in an earlier operation.

Once there you can make the changes to your other account and set that as an administrator, add any other accounts you want etc. Once you are done you should log out of the built in Admin account and sign in with your usual account. You should then disable the built-in Admin account.

 

I now have three pages of passwords stored on my 2 year old laptop for my various apps but Nowhere can I recall needing a password for Windows. Nor does one appear on these 3 pages. Both 'Administrator' and 'Harvey' seem to work as User (on a hunch I put in a random name of 'Beth' as a user and that worked too. Seems any name could be a user), but leaving the password space blank also does not work. It requires a password. However, no password on my 3 page list nor in my memory seems to work.
Any suggestions? And thanks.

 

Well, if you seem to be completely locked out of your laptop and have not been able to login into the Administrator account you have no option but to do a clean install.

 

Well, ok. That's what I was afraid of. Thanks for all of your help. I learned a lot.