Well, if you’re still with me, then my last article on local administrators may have motivated you to take the leap into a more secure user account. Congratulations, you will thank me later, after you see how much less spyware, viruses, and pop-ups find their way onto your computer.
There are a number of ways to “demote” yourself into a regular user account. The first method is to create a new user account that is a standard user, and use it instead of your current local administrator account. That would leave the admin account there for you to manage your computer as needed. The downside to this method is that the account you will be using on a regular basis will need to be customized from scratch, because all your settings and files will still be associated with the old account.
The method I prefer is to create another account, but this time give it the local administrative privileges. So you would go into Control Panel, and open up User Accounts. Go to New User, and create a new user. Name it something subtle, like “All-Mighty Admin.” No, seriously, go for something that doesn’t scream “hack me, I’m the account with all the power!” I suggest something like “maint,” “user1,” or maybe a pet’s name. Then give it a nice strong password.
The next step is to log into your new local administrator account, and make sure everything looks like it is working properly. Now, from that account, go to Control Panel > User Accounts again, and select your old administrator account. You can change the type from Administrator to Limited User. Why didn’t I say Power User? Well, that’s the subject of another post, but for now, just know that a Power User account has virtually the same privileges as an Administrator, including relatively easy access to elevate the account to an actual Administrator! So stick with the Limited User classification, I promise it won’t be that painful.
Then log into your newly demoted user account, and make sure everything works for you. There are some programs that have “issues” with the lack of administrative privileges, however. If you find any, please post in the comments, and I will try to assist you in getting it running properly. We will also discuss methods of temporarily running as an administrator when needed in the next part of this series.
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