That is a very very helpful tip Faye. I am not sure why you would feel it is a security problem. I finally gave up on xp professional because I found it impossible to deal with the lack of access to administrative mode. I wish I would have known your little secret a few months ago. I am so glad I went to 'home' because of that. My Administrative duties were nil as long as I had Professional because it wouldn't let me access it, lol. BTW, I appreciate all the wonderful coupon sites, etc you give us, keep up the good work!!

I assigned myself administrator but when it came to doing maintenance or adding new programs it would not let me do administrative duties which were those 2. No matter what I did It wouldn't let me log in as administrator, yikes I hated that and that was on both of my computers. I wish you could switch off but I never saw a place to do that. I was a relief to get the home version.

Thanks for replying, 'weezie, and thanks for the coupon kudos! Every little-bit helps. I just started checking into whether or not coupons on the net were worthwhile, so I'm still on that quest. I'll keep looking.

'Weezie, you mentioned in post#2 you weren't clear as to why I felt concerned about the security issues regarding the Administrator password issue; here is one reason why:

I'm guessing that a significant portion of people who have XP don't have it setup to use any user accounts other than the default Administrator account. So in-other-words when they boot up, they don't even have to click on any particular user in order to get to the desktop, XP just automatically opens up to the desktop which, again, is running under the default user Administrator. By default, there's no password set for Administrator. So my question is, wouldn't it be wise for users to set a password who are running their computers under the Administrator account like that, especially if they're surfing the net or on some network?

I used to think that it was wise to surf the net under XP by using a password-protected limited user account, but then I ran into the problem of not being able to get Microsoft's updates. So the best I could do was run under a newly-created password-protected user account with Administrator privileges.

Then, as was first posted, I recently discovered how to access the original Administrator account password. I discovered this by looking in an eleven-page green Microsoft booklet (page 6) tucked inside of my Gateway's reinstallation disks packet. The title of the chapter is: How can I make my computer more secure?

You mentioned XP-Pro, I've never had the pro version, but I've heard that you can get pretty particular with setting restrictions for individual users. That might be a good thing to be able to do that, but at a certain point I have to start asking myself how much tinkering is too much.

So ultimately I decided to jump ship for Linux and, ahhhh, the water's fine!

Again, thanks for replying 'weezie.

--fayejlee
p.s. Thanks for chiming in, j-mac! I'm like you , I think passwords are definitely a must, even if for peace of mind.

Hey 'weezie, in your post #5 you stated:
>Aw well crap! when typing the above I realized my cookie cleaner hadn't been coming on and sure enough I tried to refresh rescheduler and it gave me the same answer, no I cannot access that, only the administrator can. The problem is I am the administrator. I give up.

I thnk you may be confusing two different states of users here: state "1" is running under the actual user "Administrator" (safe-mode boot required), state "2" is a user created in normal-mode with "Administrator privilages" but not the actual Administrator. So do you see the difference? Tha might be your problem, but I'm not sure.

--fayejlee

'weezie,
You mentioned in an earlier post that you went back to XP-home. Do you remember if during setup, XP-home required you to setup an initial account named "Owner".

I ask this because it's been years since I've installed XP, but it does sort of seem like I recall there being the requirement to setup that user (Owner), let me know if you remember that.

So in other words, maybe XP does not even allow the true Administrator account to run in normal mode at all, period.

There's an interesting snippet I found by searching for "types of user accounts" under XP's Help and Support Center (F1).
It reads:
*****
Note

You might see an account with the name "Owner" when you first log on. The owner account, with computer administrator privileges, is created during installation if no user accounts are set up at that time. You can rename this account with a user's name.
*****

So, possibly the default account in normal-mode is Owner.

The bottom line may be this: If your cookie cleaner software is insisting on being managed while under the administrator account, you may have to boot into safe-mode. That seems strange, though, and probably not worth the bother.

And maybe it's just true that I'm more confused than you! Can I get another amen from the choir?

--fayejlee

note: I don't know about Vista, but the new Windows 7 has apparently done away with this safe-mode Administrator ordeal.

http://www.top-windows-t...ndows-xp-tutorials.html
(Be patient,Let load completely)