Cannot change account to administrator!

Anonymous
2012-11-03T17:01:26+00:00

Hi. I need to change my account to administrator so I can make changes to my internet accounts but my internet provider told me that I am just a standard user in Windows 8 and I need to change it to administrator. When I try to change my user profile from standard to administrator, Windows 8 won't let me, even though I am logged in under my Microsoft account. How can I change this? It's pretty frustrating!!

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Accounts, profiles, and login

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Anonymous
2012-11-03T22:53:02+00:00

Hi. I need to change my account to administrator so I can make changes to my internet accounts but my internet provider told me that I am just a standard user in Windows 8 and I need to change it to administrator. When I try to change my user profile from standard to administrator, Windows 8 won't let me, even though I am logged in under my Microsoft account. How can I change this? It's pretty frustrating!!

Hi

You cannot use a Standard (Local) account to change the account to Administrator. You can only use an existing Administrator account to do this.

Open Control Panel (Move the cursor to the lower/left corner of the screen and Right Click, select Control Panel on the menu.

In Control Panel, select User Accounts.

Select Manage another account.

This will show all of the user accounts on the computer. If there is an Administrator account it will show that designation.

Sign Out and log on with any Administrator Account.

Go back to Control Panel/User Accounts.

Select Manage another account and then select the Standard account you wish to change.

Select the Change Account Type option.

Select the Administrator option to change the account and click the Change Account Type button.

If there are no other Administrator Accounts, let us know and we can try another recovery method.

Let us know what you find.

Regards

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102 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-01T04:03:19+00:00

    That is not true.  I am running Windows 8.1 with 4 users, all 4 are admin.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-01T03:07:26+00:00

    Then I should have gotten some sort of warning what would happen. How was I to know that a computer can only have 2 admins.  So, how do I get at least one admin with full access?  I tried a command prompt to make the hidden admin show up (which I didn't even know there was one), and I even tried creating another account (using the hidden admin), and didn't have the option to make it admin at all.  This is getting more confusing.  Tempted to just take the computer back and delete all microsoft accounts...maybe I should switch to a mac.  Oh! and that hidden admin, I can't delete the folders that come with a user...it has limitations.  Called the microsoft techs and they are clueless.  They actually suggested I go back to factory settings.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-01T02:14:48+00:00

    I did look into it, what i found was this, there are only 2 admins. For windows 7/8 , I think when you created another user with admin elevations, you took those permissions away from your orignal admin acc.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-31T21:43:17+00:00

    I had the same problem as Judy and I tried this and it worked perfect!  Thank you so much:)

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