Give admin privilege with a fully limited user windows 7 professional

Question

i by accident made myself into Administrator for networking purposes; this i thought at first wouldn't be a problem but then i noticed.

I am a paranoid person, i have my UAC maxed, so without admin verification i cannot install nor more or overwrite files. Now, since i do not know the administrators password i cannot do this; it doesn't even work to go into cmd. "Allowance denied"

I am this limited so that all i really can do i use the computer without making a change. This is an old computer of mine and administrator password for the other user is impossible for me to remember since it's my ex-wifes account.

Please help me out, i tried system rollback but that needs UAC verification.

Solution

Hack your way into Windows 7 or 8 using startup repair (http://www.xetoware.com/windows-administrator-hack.html), or from an Ubuntu live cd/usb boot device: Mount the C: drive after booting Ubuntu, rename the /[mount]/windows/system32/sethc.exe to sethc.bak and copy /[mount]/windows/system32/cmd.exe to /[mount]/windows/system32/sethc.exe. Don't forget to remove the boot device.

After rebooting to the Windows login screen and pressing left-shift 5 times, you get a command window running as localsystem on the login screen.

To add the user of your choice to the local administrators group (but not reset any passwords), issue the following command:

net localgroup administrators <username> /add

Or, if you just want to reset your administrator's password, issue the following command:

net user <adminusername> <newpassword>

After this, reboot to Ubuntu to reverse the changes made to sethc.exe, and reboot into Windows.

Comments

[Ramhound]

You won't be able to make yourself an Administrator without access to an Administrator account.

[Frank Thomas]

once again proving that physical access == root access.

[Eelco L.]

@Frank: Yup, even an ordinary bios password can be reset. Only when the C: drive is completely encrypted the system is safe.