How to Log On as an Administrator in Windows Vista

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews, today I'm going to show you how to log on as administrator in Microsoft Windows Vista. There are two types of users in Vista, a standard user and an administrator. Administrators are allowed to change global settings such as installing software and creating new users. A standard user is not allowed to access any of that. Most users that you're going to have in your Windows Vista are going to be standard users, just for the protection of the computer. There's typically only one administrator. So I'm going to show you how to log in as that administrator. Here I'm logged on as Dave which is a standard user in Windows Vista. To log on as administrator, let's go down here to the start button which is this round button in Windows Vista, and we're going to select this tiny little arrow next to the lock icon, and we're going to say switch user. That's going to bring up a list of all of the users in the system including the administrator user. On my system the administrator is called admin. Click on admin just to log in as him and this will allow you to log in ad administrator and change global settings and let's say you need to install a program. This is the first time that I've logged on as the administrator user on this computer, so it's setting up my desktop for the first time use. Many networks will have their own administrator who takes care of multiple standard users. So if you're ever in an office environment and you were the administrator for example, you would not grant the users in the office full administrative rights on each computer, you'd reserve that for yourself. So here I am logged on as the administrator. And I'm able to access everything in the computer, and do whatever the administrator needs to do. To go back to the standard user, just select this little icon and select log off. Logging in as the administrator can be an effective tool for managing your users and making sure that nothing gets installed or changed on the computer that shouldn't be. My name is Dave Andrews, and I've just showed you how to log in as the administrator in Windows Vista."