# Acquiring Administrative Priviliges **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537 "2008-01-30T00:51:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/1 "2008-01-30T00:51:56Z")
How does one acquire these? I have Windows XP on my computer and it won’t read a CD-ROM (DVD) I bought today, since I did not start the computer logging on with “administrative privileges,” whatever that means. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/2 "2008-01-30T00:54:18Z")
You must have several user accounts on your machine. One or more of them will have “Administrator Access”. I’m not sure how you figure out which accounts are Admins(you might be able to go to the Control Panel and check under Users and Groups). ---
**Author:** ![Danalan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@Danalan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danalan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/3 "2008-01-30T01:05:15Z")
If this is exclusively your computer, set up for you by someone else, there is likely a user called ‘administrator’. Try logging in as ‘administrator’, and don’t enter a password (leave the password field blank). If this lets you in, you may want to assign a password to the administrator login for security sake. It is generally a good security practice to use a login with less than administrator access for day-to-day tasks, and running software as the administrator only when necessary. If this is a computer that others also use, you must find someone who has administrator access. Alternatively, there exists software which will bypass or reset all the passwords on a system, although if this is not your computer there may be legality issues in running this software. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/4 "2008-01-30T01:17:10Z")
Thanks, but I don’t know where along the line–I am sole user of this computer, which my brother sent me last year–I digress and “log in as administrator.” It’s a Dell Inspiron 4100 Laptop, using Windows XP. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/5 "2008-01-30T01:31:53Z")
A few programs require not only that the installer have an account with Administrator privileges, but that the user _be named_ Administrator and have Administrator privileges. We ran into this when installing one version of Adobe FrameMaker on our corporate PCs one time: we had to get IT to log in as Administrator and then turn the computers over to us so that we could install it. Merely having Administrator privileges wasn’t enough. I don’t know the reasoning behind this. Possibly it was an error. ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Doubt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@Stan\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Doubt)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/6 "2008-01-30T02:57:54Z")
When you boot it up, and are ready to log in, press Ctrl\>Alt\>Del and then press Ctrl\>Alt\>Del again then hit enter or click OK. This will work if there is no administrator password. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acquiring-administrative-priviliges/435537/7 "2008-01-30T18:48:46Z")
I just got an e-mail from my brother; he said for me to check UserAccounts on the Control Panel. I did; according to that reference I already _am_ Administrator under the name of “My Laptop.” I had the feeling the external CD drive is just not able (for one reason or another) to read a DVD put into it. This is a Print Master (Broderbund) DVD, and a Memorex exrernal drive that is supposed to be able to read DVDs _or_ CDs. (My computer is a Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop, whose internal CD drive has conked out.)