Windows 10: Set up admin account on system with standard account only

Hello everyone. This is my first post on Ten Forums.

How can I create an admin account on a system that only has a standard user account? I suspect that the answer is that I can't, but I live in hope.

I can't provide specific details of the PC in question because it's my son's, and he lives 35+ miles away. He was running Win 8.1 but recently (in the past couple of days) upgraded to 10 and has run into a driver issue. He can't upgrade the driver because he doesn't have admin rights. I think he has an admin account on his system because I put it there, but it doesn't show up as a log-in option.

I've tried to enable the hidden admin account from a standard user acc on my system by running the command prompt as admin but am always to verify as admin - catch 22...

TIA for any advice offered,

Steve

:)

 

Windows 10 error "file system error (-1073741819)" can't run any .exe files

Did not work permanently for me. I have one admin account and two standard accounts. In the first standard account, I set the sound scheme to 'No sound' and the 'Run as Admin' worked. Switched it back to Windows Default and it failed again. Switched to the
second account, set the sound to 'No sound' -- no effect on 'Run as Admin' -- still fails.

Only thing that works consistently is to use the admin account to manually start the Windows Modules Installer service, then switch to one of the standard accounts. But that's way too complicated.

 

want to change from user account to admin account

Some minor points to avoid any confusion in terms later on -

1 "from admin to user account" - No, you changed an Admin user account to a Standard user account. They are both types of user account.

2 Only Admin user accounts can create new user accounts.

3 Only Admin user accounts can "elevate" a Standard user account to be an Admin user account.

Denis

 

Hi finnfire and welcome to Tenforums.

If you did indeed put an administrative account on your son's machine, then it would show up when he tries to do something that requires administrative privileges, (i.e. install a new program), and ask for that account's password. When the UAC pops up, the administrative account will be there waiting for the password to be entered. If you remember the password for that account, then he can do whatever he needs to do, if you give it to him.

If this doesn't work, you could try Option #4 in this tutorial:
Administrator account - Enable or Disable in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Edit: Once the hidden Admin account is enabled, boot into Windows, log into that account, create a user with administrative rights, and then go back to step #4 and disable the hidden Admin account.

 

Thanks simrick, that seemed to do the trick *Smile

I trialled it on a copy of my Win 10 virtual machine. I booted into it using the Win 8 installation disk and it worked a treat. I've played with regedit before so I hoped that there was a switch somewhere in the registry.

I'll let you know when I've done the same on my son's laptop.

Cheers,

Steve

 

That's good news! *Biggrin
Cheers Steve