Solved: Can't activate Administrator account in Windows 7 Ultimate

[Alex Ethridge]

A note to moderators:
I am not looking for help cracking a password. I am looking for help understanding why a password prompt is appearing, in other words, what might I have done wrong during setup or maybe what I might do during Windows 7 installation to prevent this happening again.

A caution to those who may reply:
Avoid posts that deal with how to crack or otherwise bypass a password.


Now to the problem:
I have tried both of the following methods to activate the Administrator account in Windows 7. The Admin account comes up on the windows log-in screen; but, it is asking for a password. Problem is I just minutes ago finished setting up this Windows 7 Ultimate on a new, out-of-the-box hard disk and I did not give the Admin account a password.

Command-prompt Method:
Right-clicked the command prompt in the program list and chose "Run as administrator".
Entered the command below and pressed enter to activate it:
net user administrator /active:yes
It returned "Command completed successfully"

Security Policy Snap-in Method:
Right-clicked the command prompt in the program list and chose "Run as administrator".
Typed secpol.msc in the Command window and pressed enter. The Local Security Policy snap-in appeared.
Went to Local Policies> Security Options where I saw an entry that read "Accounts: Administrator account".
Double-clicked the entry and selected the "Enable" radio button.

Is there something about the above methods of activating the Admin account that should be covered and isn't? I have enabled the Admin account in Vista before and didn't have a problem. Why is this happening in 7?

This is a new disk and a new installation so there is no user data on the disk so I'm not against installing Windows again; but, if this happened once, I'm afraid it might again. What did I do wrong?

 

[Lance1]

By activate I would assume you mean Enable Have you tried enabling the admin through Manage \ Local Users and Groups \ Users? If your Windows 7 is a slipstream, you may have inadvertently disabled the account in the process.

 

[Alex Ethridge]

Yes, enable.

I think I found what caused the problem. I attempted to enable the Administrator account before activating Windows. Even after activating Windows 7, I still could not enable the Admin account without its requiring a password.

I reinstalled Windows 7, activated Windows and then enabled the Admin acct. It worked out fine.

I take this to mean that, whether intended by MS or not, if you attempt to enable the admin acct before activating Windows, you're in for trouble.