Lost Administrator Rights

I had the same problem. This worked.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

When you setup vista for the first time, you are required to create the local administrator as yourself. Once this is done, the default vista account "administrator" is then automatically disabled. I'm not sure why my logon got reset to standard user, but it did. And it happened after I was trying to install programs and had to turn on and off the UAC. But this download has extremely clear instructions and a walk through, read the walkthrough and the FAQ. Looks difficult, but it's really not. It also warns, as you will see, that some things may or may not work. I opted for what was known to work and did the following after booting up with the CD that I burned with the Image file I downloaded.

1. Enabled the default "administrator" account that installs with every windows installtion.
2. Set the "administator" password to nothing.

Restarted and lo and behold, the "administator" user was now available on start up and no password. Logged in, set myself as administrator again and life is good.

Hope this helps

T