Enabling the Administrator account on Windows 7

By default, the Windows 7 Administrator user is disabled. This prevents you from doing interesting things like using the RUNAS command to start shells with extra permissions.

To enable the Administrator user, do the following:

1. Open the Explorer
2. Navigate to C:\Windows\System32 and select cmd
3. Right-click and select “Run as Administrator”
4. Give permission to make changes to your system. This will open an elevated permission command prompt.
5. In the elevated permission command prompt, enter “net user Administrator /active:yes”
6. Go to Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety -> User Accounts -> Manage Another Account
7. Select Administrator
8. Create a Password (or Change the Password if you’ve already set one).
9. Enter the password twice to set/change it

It’s probably wise to have a fairly strong password on the Administrator account.