Built-in administrator account does not appear on login screen

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T21:14:54-0400

After some digging I found that in my W11 system the built-in administrator account is named DefaultAccount.
I went through the process of activating that account and setting a password, but it does not show on my login screen.
Is a reboot required, or should user switch be enough?

antspants · 2025-07-17T21:23:26-0400

The attachment can not be seen. EDIT: Thanks for fixing that.
Why would you want the built in administrator on your login screen?
Why is the built in admin account named DefaultAccount, what did you do? It should just be called “Administrator“
~~What is your user account when you installed Windows, are you confusing the two?~~

The built in Admin account has unrestricted access to the entire system (higher than regular admin accounts). It can bypass User Account Control (UAC) meaning actions are not prompted for approval. It’s disabled by default for security reasons. For a good reason.

pseymour · 2025-07-17T21:27:20-0400

That's pretty odd, because the default description for the admin account is "Built-in account for administering the computer/domain." You can run this PowerShell command to get the name of the actual Administrator account.

Powershell:

Get-LocalUser | Where-Object { $_.SID -match '-500$' }

If you want all of the local admin accounts, use

Powershell:

Get-LocalGroup -SID 'S-1-5-32-544' | Get-LocalGroupMember

dacrone · 2025-07-17T21:41:21-0400

And so what shows when you run the following in an elevated command prompt:

Code:

net user Administrator /active:yes

?

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T21:46:29-0400

dacrone said:
And so what shows when you run the following in an elevated command prompt:

Code:

net user Administrator /active:yes

?

C:\Windows\System32>net user Administrator /active:yes
The user name could not be found.

More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 2221.

dacrone · 2025-07-17T21:47:36-0400

Is this a work pc or personal?
If personal.. Did you buy it used?

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T21:52:22-0400

antspants said:
The attachment can not be seen. EDIT: Thanks for fixing that.
Why would you want the built in administrator on your login screen?
I have a good reason for wanting available for logon.
Why is the built in admin account named DefaultAccount, what did you do? It should just be called “Administrator“
I did nothing.
~~What is your user account when you installed Windows, are you confusing the two?~~

The built in Admin account has unrestricted access to the entire system (higher than regular admin accounts). It can bypass User Account Control (UAC) meaning actions are not prompted for approval. It’s disabled by default for security reasons. For a good reason.
Please credit me with some sense and experience.

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T21:53:53-0400

dacrone said:
Is this a work pc or personal?
If personal.. Did you buy it used?

Personal. Custom built from new..
Windows 11 installed as upgrade from Windows 10.

Spunk · 2025-07-17T21:57:10-0400

go to Start/Shutdown/Switch User. is the Admin account available?
To list all users on the computer., start a command Prompt as Admin and type
Net User and press Enter

dacrone · 2025-07-17T21:57:25-0400

Hairy Scot said:
I did nothing.

Hairy Scot said:
Personal. Custom built from new..
Windows 11 installed as upgrade from Windows 10.

If this was a fresh install, you HAD to have changed something… intentionally or not. That name isn’t easily, inadvertently changed. Where did you get the iso from during install?

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T21:59:02-0400

dacrone said:
If this was a fresh install, you HAD to have changed something… intentionally or not. That name isn’t easily, inadvertently changed. Where did you get the iso from during install?

What is use of DefaultAccount in windows 11 - Microsoft Q&A

I am searching for the answer about how windows DefaultAccount user used for and i got following answer but i can't understand properly so could anyone explain this in simple words: DefaultAccount : The DefaultAccount, also known as the Default System…

learn.microsoft.com

pseymour · 2025-07-17T22:01:20-0400

If you could run the commands in post 3, we could get to the bottom of this.

dacrone · 2025-07-17T22:06:27-0400

DefaultAccount is not Administrator. If that is the true DSMA, then it is a completely different account. Still doesn’t answer how Administrator is not found.

antspants · 2025-07-17T22:09:13-0400

Please credit me with some sense and experience.

Fair go. I would but your post reads differently. Members can only go on a post by post basis. I am not the only member to ask, what the hell?
Good luck with it.

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-17T22:26:43-0400

PowerShell and CMD differ.

C:\Windows\System32>net user
User accounts for \\JIM-DESKTOP
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DefaultAccount Guest Jim
WDAGUtilityAccount WsiAccount
The command completed successfully.

PS C:\Users\jimwa> Get-LocalGroup -SID 'S-1-5-32-544' | Get-LocalGroupMember
ObjectClass Name PrincipalSource
----------- ---- ---------------
User JIM-DESKTOP\Administrator Local
User JIM-DESKTOP\Jim MicrosoftAccount
Group NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE Unknown
Group NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE Unknown

PS C:\Users\jimwa> Get-LocalUser
Name Enabled Description
---- ------- -----------
DefaultAccount True A user account managed by the system.
Guest True Built-in account for guest access to the computer/domain
Jim True
WDAGUtilityAccount True A user account managed and used by the system for Windows Defender Application Guard scen...
WsiAccount False A user account managed and used by the system for Web Sign-in scenarios.

It would seem some corruption may have occurred.

dacrone said:
If this was a fresh install, you HAD to have changed something… intentionally or not. That name isn’t easily, inadvertently changed. Where did you get the iso from during install?

Create installation media on Windows site.

pseymour · 2025-07-17T22:35:19-0400

The command I was interested in was Get-LocalUser | Where-Object { $_.SID -match '-500$' }, not simply Get-LocalUser. Also, you should not have the local service and network service accounts in your Administrators group; yikes.

glasskuter · 2025-07-17T22:40:28-0400

Hairy Scot said:
the built-in administrator account is named DefaultAccount

I believe that is incorrect.
The C:\Users\Default folder in Windows is not an actual user account, but rather a template profile used by the operating system when creating new user accounts.

You will not see administrator as a user until it is enabled.

MisterEd · 2025-07-17T23:22:19-0400

I enabled normally hidden built-in Administrator account:

net user Administrator /active:yes

After that I could select and log into it:

I found a thread on another forum that gave a script to list all the users. The following has the script saved on D:\

In Notepad

Set colItems = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2").ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_UserAccount Where LocalAccount=True")
For Each objItem in colItems
Wscript.Echo objItem.Name
Next

Save as "D:\GetLocalUsers.vbs"

Open CommamdPrompt or PowerShell and run:

D:\>cscript //NoLogo GetLocalUsers.vbs

It shows this on my computer

2025-07-17 22_30_00-Administrator_ Command Prompt.webp

List All User Accounts on a Windows System via Command Line

Hairy Scot · 2025-07-18T03:15:59-0400

Obviously at some point the built-in admin account has been removed from my system.
Is there any way to get that account back or is a re-install the only way?

glasskuter · 2025-07-18T03:41:48-0400

Did you open command prompt as administrator and type net user administrator /active:yes to enable the administrator account.

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