Add administrator account to welcome screen

Vista is designed so that using the default administrator account is not necessary. Unfortunately, the lever for doing this is the ever-intrusive UAC (User Access Control) which we have already talked about. If you would rather go directly to the source to make your changes and use the administrator account, you might be baffled since this account is inactive by default. Let's look at making the default administrator account one of your login options on the welcome screen, so it's available when needed.

To make the administrator account appear on the login screen we need to do two operations; add a password to the administrator account and make it active.

To add a password to the administrator account and activate it:

Open the 'start menu' and type 'cmd' in the search bar but do not press Enter. Right click on the 'cmd' shortcut where it appears in the search results and choose 'run as administrator'.

In the command prompt, type 'Net user administrator (password)' where (password) is the password you want to apply to the administrator account. Do not include the brackets. Hit Enter.

In the same command prompt, type 'Net user administrator /active:yes' and press Enter.

The administrator account will now appear on the welcome screen and can be used.