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
    2013-12-27T19:05:07+00:00

    I just tried Ronnie Vernon solution to go into safe mode and I still have change account type greyed out when I click administrator.  This makes absolutely no sense since above this it shows as administrator/password protected but standard is clicked.  I did not make these changes... all I did was to create another local user and give it administrator priviledges as well.

    Because of this I can't create new folders on my computer....how ridiculous is this that an administrator should have 2 levels more.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-28T16:53:17+00:00

    Well, I purchased Windows 8 when it first came out and I was unable to make changes to my account, even though I was the administrator. At that time, Windows 8 was not supported by my internet provider either, nor my wireless printers or router, even though they were less than a year old. I tried downloading new software on the printers' websites, but had spotty performance with 1 printer and no connection at all with the other. After updating to Windows 8.1 my printers stopped connecting altogether. Now I could have gone out and bought a new router and new printers, but why do that? They work perfectly fine with my husband's and kids' Windows 7 laptops, so my solution seemed like the best one for me. Now that I have Windows 7 installed I have absolutely no problems connecting to my router or my 2 wireless printers. It is a lot more user friendly than Windows 8 in my point of view.

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  3. 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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  4. 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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