Travel Technology - Administrator Account on XP Pro

I just got a new lap top - configured by our companies "student geek". I always like to have two login accounts on a computer - in case I lose a password OR the password gets corrupted, etc.

I just tried to create an account called Administrator and it told me that Administrator was already created, though I can't see it on the list.

Right away I got to thinking has our "student geek" created a back door to my machine that I don't know about. Has he put something on the machine that I can't find?

Any thoughts? He only works P/T and usually Thursday and Fridays so I have a couple of days to let my curiousity go wild for a while.

You're already letting your curiousity go wild.

All XP installations create an Administrator account by default. In fact, if the installer was lazy, it's password-less. That's the real security problem.

I just got a new lap top - configured by our companies "student geek". I always like to have two login accounts on a computer - in case I lose a password OR the password gets corrupted, etc.

I just tried to create an account called Administrator and it told me that Administrator was already created, though I can't see it on the list.

Right away I got to thinking has our "student geek" created a back door to my machine that I don't know about. Has he put something on the machine that I can't find?

Any thoughts? He only works P/T and usually Thursday and Fridays so I have a couple of days to let my curiousity go wild for a while.
You should be able to see the Administrator account (and change it's password, assuming you're a member of the Administrators group) by going into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, then selecting System Tools, Local Users and Groups.

Anyone that has that much distrust over someone that uses their PC should never let anyone else ever touch their PC... :p

Anyone that has that much distrust over someone that uses their PC should never let anyone else ever touch their PC... :p

ScottC - I should have added that my company let a previous student go because he was "experimenting" with corporate tracking software. Good idea I guess, but the only problem was that it wasn't authorized.

As a basic precaution, the "Administrator" and "Guest" default accounts should be completely disabled.

On a side note, I just used a program tonight the gets you the Administrator (or whatever account names were set up) password. Worked great:
http://www.xppasswordrecovery.co.uk/

You mentioned it isn't listed... while this probably isn't the case, for anyone who doesn't know, you can get the "standard" login prompt from XP home or a XP machine that isn't joined to a domain (but is part of a workgroup instead) by issuing the standard Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence at the picture-login screen. This will let you log in as Administrator (with the right password) or any other unlisted account.

It is a shame how often one finds the administrator password is blank. So, definitely try that. Otherwise, it is likely to be a corporate/IT password that you will, most likely, not be able to get your hands on, as that would give you similar access to your coworkers' similarly configured machines.

If you end up just asking for a 2nd account to be added to the machine (I keep one for giving presentations to give the appearance that I keep a clean desktop, when in fact there isn't a spare inch free in real life) make sure you have it configured properly so that you can access the files/folders you want as either account holder, especially if you don't have admin privileges to "force" your way in.

You should always assign a password to the Adminstrator account for security purposes

There's tweaks (http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm) to hide/unhide accounts from the foofoo XP login screen. Administrator and Guest are not visible by default.

-JC

Depending on how it was set up, you may be trying to log into the domain, and not the machine, so make sure it's set for the local machine if it usually is on a domain.