Saving Default Administrator's profile

Psych

Senior member
Feb 3, 2004
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It is discouraged to run the computer with the default Administrator account for normal use, so I have finally decided to try to use a different account.

But I'm afraid that a lot of the tweaks that I've done on the Administrator account are account specific, so I think the export Profile feature in XP will help. But I can't export the profile from Administrator!

Is there a way around this?
 

azel

Member
Jun 16, 2004
40
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Recommended is just to change the username. Most script kiddies just try out the "administrator" username, and having another account with admin rights and disabling the original one is not more secure than just having that new admin account. (Which is same as renaming the original account)

--To change username of your current administrator account:

1. Go to control panels --> Administrative Tools
2. Open Computer Management
3. "Local Users and Groups", choose "Users" and then right click "Administrator" and choose "rename"
4. Enter whatever new user name. This will be your new log-in name.

This makes hacks against username/pass cracks safe but it doesn't protect you from an event where your current account becomes screwed up and you need to use another admin account to repair the system. You can create a spare admin account if this is your concern.

In case you do want to copy settings because you really want an admin account with different identifier than the default one you can follow these steps:

You can copy the "Administrator" folder contents on to the corresponding user folder at:
c:\documents and settings\
and most application data can be copied over.

For registry settings, you can export most software settings safely by exporting:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software
while logged in as the old user, and then importing it while logged in in the new user.

You can even try exporting, importing the whole current user key but this might cause problems so I wouldn't recommend it. You'll only screw up the new account if it fails, however, so you might as well try it if you just made your new account.