Hence, this simply means that UAC is disabled by default for the built-in Administrator account.
Running Vista in Admin Approval Mode is nothing other than running Vista with UAC enabled. There is a special Group Policy setting where this behavior can be changed: 'Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account'. Let's see how powerful they really are: The built-in Administrator account and UAC (User Account Control) ^Īpproval mode for the local Administrator account is disabled by default. Well, there are indeed a few differences between members of the administrators group and the built-in administrator account.
What I find interesting is that I wasn't able to find one article that also tells you what these magical, super secret, true administrator powers are. (You probably know this other myth that 'true administrators' work on the command prompt.) Usually these articles don't tell you that the built-in Administrator account can also just be enabled through the Local Users and Groups snap-in or simply Computer Management, just like the Guest account which is also disabled by default. Usually they tell you the 'command line trick' (net user administrator /active: yes) which makes the whole thing look like even more of a secret, that is, knowledge only real hackers have. There are myriads of articles on the web that explain how to enable the built-in Administrator account in Windows Vista.
