Some Knowledge About Windows Local Administrator Account

Some days ago, I wrote an article about the alleged superpowers of the built-in administrator account. The local administrator has more or less the same privileges as the other administrator accounts, but it is not a full-fledged Administrator account; it's just another account with computer administrator privileges. In this article, let us have a learning of local administrator account.

Create a local administrator account

Why you need to create a local administrator? I recommend that every admin should have their own accounts, but, in my experience, this just isn't practical for local accounts. It is quite time-consuming and dangerous to work with many local admin accounts. Having no local admin account isn't practical either. If a machine is not able to log on to a domain, for example, you need a local admin account to find the problem. To re-install the OS without an admin account is certainly not feasible.

Usually when the computer is used at the first time, the system has created a local administrator account. If you want to add a new local administrator account, you can do as follows:

1. Choose Start, right-click Computer, and select Manage.

2. Expand Local Users and Groups, right-click Users, and then select New User.

3. Enter a User Name, Full Name, and Password.

4. Deselect the User Must Change Password At Next Logon option and select the Password Never Expires option.

5. Click Create, then click Close.

6. Right-click the user account name and choose Properties.

7. On the Member Of tab, click Add.

8. Type Administrators and click OK.

9. Click OK and close Computer Management.

Change the password of local administrator account regularly

This is easier said than done. From my experience, it is essential that you have a fixed schedule for this. It is not enough to just decide that you will change local administrator accounts "regularly" because there will always be other things that you have to do first. How often you do this depends on how much you value security, but once a month would already be considered. I recommend choosing a fixed day. I don't even have to mention how essential it is to use a sufficiently complex password for the administrator account.

If you unluckily forgot the password, Windows Password Recovery software will reset the forgotten password for you. This kind of software is designed to recover forgotten Windows password. If you forgot Windows 7 password, you can get back to the computer with the software.