How to grant Windows 8 admin rights without admin account?

Question

Unfortunately I derp'ed and locked myself out of my admin account. I have a non-admin account that I can still log onto. I don't have access to another computer to try some of the many other methods of getting past and reseting the admin passsword, but I need to either grant myself admin rights so I can get back on or reset the admin password from a non-admin account.

Is there any way to do this? Any sort of registry editing I can do as a regular user?

Thanks.

Solution

Provided the system is not encrypted one could use a tool such as konboot or to boot into the system.

Probably the world's best remedy for forgotten passwords. Now with online account authorization bypass!

Konboot works on the following Operating Systems

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux

From my understanding the way it works is by injecting code into the kernel during boot, and then eliminates all passwords for all accounts local to the computer. This means you can set the password for that account, or you can create a new admin account without a password.

Also here you can see the instructions.

Comments

[Scott Chamberlain]

What is the point of having separate admin rights if a non admin can grant itself privileges? Without doing some kind of "Exploit" or finding a way to log in as adminstrator you may just need to end up re-installing windows.

[Euthyphro]

That is the point, hoping there is an exploit around this to save me grief of reinstalling.

[Jon]

You could crack the password with Ophcrack

[Stevoisiak]

Is this really a duplicate? The linked question refers to Windows XP, not Windows 8.

[Scott Chamberlain]

One important note you left out, you need to open a administrative command prompt to do those commands which if you don't have the administrative login will likely need to be done via a recovery disk. And if you have an administrative command prompt there is no reason to replace utilman, just do the net user command directly from your elevated prompt.

[Gaurav Joseph]

@ScottChamberlain, I may not be right but since the Ease of Access tool has to be executed with admin privileges, you might have a command prompt as admin. I really don't have access to a Windows 8 machine now, so these are just speculations. Also since he doesn't have the admin password he can't do a net user ....

[Prerak Diwan]

Please see this meta post on how to recommend software.

[Ramhound]

How do you achieve what you describe exactly? I personally know how but not everyone does.

[user400344]

The utility just changes a std account to admin. Achieve that by running it and going through a few prompts. Knoppix is just a bootable dvd, so one must obviously boot from it. mounting is usually 'mount -o rw,errors=remount-ro /dev/sdaX /mnt' . this will only take 5 minutes, unlike the other method described here.