Page 895 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

POWER USERS’ CLINIC THE OTHER ADMINISTRATOR
ACCOUNT

This will sound confusing. But there’s another kind of administrator

account: the administrator account.

This is an emergency backup account with full administrator powers
and no password. Even if you delete all your other accounts, this one

still remains, if only to give you some way to get into your machine. It’s
called Administrator, and it’s ordinarily hidden.

Most people see it only in times of troubleshooting, when they start up

their PCs in Safe Mode (Figure 15-8). It’s the ideal account to use in
those situations. Not only does it come with no password assigned, but
it’s also unlimited. It gives you free power over every file, which is just

what you may need to troubleshoot your computer.

Back in Windows XP, the problem was, of course, that anyone who
knew about it could get into Windows with full administrator privileges

—and no need to know a password. Your kid, for example, could blow
right past your carefully established parental controls—and let’s not
even consider what a virus could do.

So in the more security-minded Windows 10, the secret administrator
account is still there, but it’s disabled. It comes to life only if you’re
starting your PC in Safe Mode.

(That’s on a standard home or small-office PC. On a corporate domain
network, only a networking geek who’s got a domain admin account
can start up in Safe Mode. You know who you are.)