UAC Hell

[gosh]

If you thought UAC was very annoying, you haven't seen UAC Hell. User account control in vista is very annoying. I recently learned it's possible to make an unattend file that created a regular user, but didn't add the user to the administrators group. The end results is no administrive users. How does UAC handle a situation with no administrators? See below

[cluberti]

Did you delete the built-in administrator account? I know it won't help you now on this install , but there's a snippet from an unattend xml file here to enable the admin account during install so that this shouldn't happen again...

[gosh]

What i did is use an unattend.xml file. The problem was i told the xml file to put my user into the 'administator' group instead of the 'administrators' group. Because i forgot the S vista put my user into the users group, which meant i had no administrator accounts so i couldn't do anything.

I found it funny because obviously microsoft did not test this because as you see in the screenshot, it gives you nothing to do. OK is grayed out. UAC was programmed to show any administrator accounts in the interfact, however no one at microsoft programmed what UAC should do when there are none.

-gosh

[Idontwantspam]

Well, they were probably expecting that there always would be one!

In my experience, they go to great pains to make sure there's at least one admin account on the machine - if you log in to the last existing administrator account, the built in one not included, and try to demote yourself or delete yourself, it'll tell you that's not allowed. It always tries to have the built in one plus an extra since the built-in doesn't always appear. They probably weren't expecting a situation like this.

I'd say just change the XML file.

[cluberti]

Even I have to admit that's a funny screenie

[razormoon]

It's like you've made it through one of those McDonald's tray liner maze games, only you got nowhere and everybody is laughing!

Fantastic pic! (on my wall)

Edited November 8, 2007 by razormoon

[dkhandel]

Hi Dude,

If the last local administrator account is inadvertently demoted, disabled or deleted, safe mode will allow the disabled built-in administrator account to logon for disaster recovery.

Read here how to: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsvistasecurity...asecurity_.aspx

I think, we are facing very practical scenario, and MS have already taken care of this. Let us know how it goes.

Best wishes,

Dilip.