Solved Moving from Built-in Administrator to Standard User Account on New PC

On my new (pre-owned) PC, I found out I was using the Built-in Administrator (BIA) account. Now I want to move everything I was working on to a Standard User Account (SUA). I realize that "everything" is not exactly a term of art in the present context, but I'm looking for as much guidance as possible. I'm new to W11 (W7 was what I used until my computer was bricked by ransomware), and I want to evacuate BIA territory stat as this is how my former PC died. Please advise.

chiropterist said:

On my new (pre-owned) PC, I found out I was using the Built-in Administrator (BIA) account. Now I want to move everything I was working on to a Standard User Account (SUA). I realize that "everything" is not exactly a term of art in the present context, but I'm looking for as much guidance as possible. I'm new to W11 (W7 was what I used until my computer was bricked by ransomware), and I want to evacuate BIA territory stat as this is how my former PC died. Please advise.

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Are you sure you're using the built-in Administrator account? Or are you using an account that is an administrator? There are significant differences. The normal configuration is that the built-in Administrator account is disabled, and your user account is an administrator.

The built-in Administrator account is named Administrator, an administrator user account can have any name. You can create as many user accounts as you like, and choose whether they are a standard account or an administrator account.

For most of the time an ordinary administrator user is running processes as a standard user anyway, only if you try to do something that requires admin rights then UAC (User Account Control) will ask you if you really want to do so, just click Yes to exercise your admin rights. A standard user will also be challenged by UAC, but will need to provide the name/password of an administrator account to continue. Any malware process would also trigger a UAC challenge.

The only risk in using an ordinary administrator account is that you may click 'yes' without thinking. If you like, you could create yourself a standard user account and use that for most purposes.

I have only 1 computer with a Microsoft Account with Administrator rights [only one with Microsoft 365 installed], the rest have Local accounts with Administrator rights. The Standard account can't do as much to the computer and settings as the Local.

@Bree, You're right, I wasn't using the BIA.

So now that I'm using my local "standard user" account, what should I do with the administrator account (not the BIA)? I'm guessing I should disable it, but can I also hide it from the sign-on screen? Indeed, as I'm the only person who uses this computer, can I disable the sign-on screen altogether and go straight into my account when I turn the PC on?

chiropterist said:

@Bree, You're right, I wasn't using the BIA.

So now that I'm using my local "standard user" account, what should I do with the administrator account (not the BIA)? I'm guessing I should disable it, but can I also hide it from the sign-on screen? Indeed, as I'm the only person who uses this computer, can I disable the sign-on screen altogether and go straight into my account when I turn the PC on?

Click to expand...

No, don't disable it. You will need an administrator account if you ever need to make changes to your PC (installing software, etc.). You can do this either by signing in to that admin account, or from your standard account and providing the admin account's password when challenged by the UAC. Neither of which would be an option if you disable the admin account.

Also, if you did disable your only admin account, how would you ever enable it again? (Think about it - you need admin rights to enable/disable an account.)

There are two ways to go straight to the desktop when you start up. The first is to use a local account that has no password. At startup Windows tries to sign in as the last user that was signed in, if that user account has no password you'll get signed straight in.

The other is to set up Windows to automatically sign you in. See this tutorial.

@Bree, Thanks for suggesting the tutorial, that was just what I wanted to do. The more distance between me and the admin account, the better.

One last question: from my reading, I gather that even a local administrator account is vulnerable to outside attacks. I also recall reading somewhere that an account without a password is less (?) vulnerable. How can I best protect my computer?