Add Yourself to the Administrators Group

The Administrators group is the most powerful group on an XP system, granted the power to perform almost any task, be it installing new programs, backing up and restoring files, or editing a Group Policy object. In fact, many of the techniques described in this book require that you're a part of the Administrators group, so I'd better show you how to add yourself to this group if your account is not in it already.

The first account created by Windows XP startup is the administrator account and is automatically part of the Administrators group. XP also creates an account called "Administrator," and this account, too, is part of the Administrators group. To perform administrative tasks, you can use either the first account created or the Administrator account. To manage members of the Administrators group, open the Computer Management tool (right-click My Computer and choose Manage) and then Expand System Tools | Local Users and Groups, and choose the Groups node. You can add any account to the Administrators group, but you have to do so while logged on as a user with administrative rights.

Double-click the Administrators group to bring up the group Properties dialog box. You can add and remove users with the window shown in Figure 14-1.

Figure 14-1. Add yourself to the Administrators local group.

It's also good security practice to rename the Administrator account.