Windows

A More Secure Way Of Performing Administrative Tasks In XP

Posted by on Feb 22, 2007 | 2 Comments

Most network related tasks must be performed by an administrator. An administrator account does exist by default. However, to increase security, it is usually recommended that you rename the administrator account to something else and create your own user account to log on with.

Once you have your own account, you can add it to the built-in administrators group to give yourself the necessary permissions to perform network related tasks (as well as other system tasks). In Windows XP, you can do so using the following steps:

  1. Right click My Computer and click Manage.
  2. Expand Local Users and Groups.
  3. Highlight Groups and double click Administrators in the details pane.
  4. Click Add. Enter the name of the user you want to add to the group. Click OK.
  5. Click OK.

The user account you just added to the administrators group will now be able to perform network related tasks on the computer.

[tags]administrator, administrate, security, administrator account, XP, Windows[/tags]

  • John

    There is no ‘Local Users and Groups’. on my machine

  • John

    I think one additional piece of guidance on admin-enabled accounts is in order.

    The admin account, by whatever name, should be an account from which one only does admin type tasks, when required. It should *not* be the account from which one regularly uses the computer. So, users should have their regular ‘limited user’ account’ in addition to the admin account. When admin-level access is required, log into, or ‘run as’ the admin account, then get out of it. Read your mail, surf the web only from your limited privilege account.

    Most exploits run at the privilege level of the user. If you encounter an exploit while running as a limited user, its privilege level is limited as well. If you encounter it while running as an admin, you could compromise the entire system.

    Does this solve everything? Certainly not. But every little bit helps.