Out of control multiple Administrators

[kseidman]

I am the only user on an XP Home Edition computer. Control Panel|User Accounts indicates that I am the only Administrator. However, when I boot up in Safe Mode, another Administrator called Foxfire appears. (Foxfire is the name of my computer). I don't
know if this is normal?

The PROBLEM is that sometimes (don't know why or when this will happen) when I create or move folders (e.g. by dragging a folder from my second hard drive to my C drive) this other administrator (Foxfire) is the only one with access to it. In normal XP bo
otup mode I cannot access, or delete these "Foxfire" owned folders. I recently discovered that if I am in Safe Mode I can change the owner to me (kseidman, Administrator) and then when I go back to normal mode, I can access and delete these folders.

Is any of this normal behaviour? What I would like is to eliminate the Foxfire Administrator or, if this is not possible, to gain control of all folders, files, now and forevermore on my computer!

BTW, in the first few months of owning my Dell computer with XP I had numerous XP blue screen of death crashes (corrupted system files, etc) and had to re-install XP. Once I also re-formatted the hard drive. Perhaps this Foxfire Admininstrator is some le
ft over from a previous XP installation?

Help greatly appreciated,
Thanks,

Ken

[purplehaz]

Not normal. On every xp install there is a "hidden" administartor account
called administartor. This admin has all rights and is all powerful. This is
not the user you use for daily use. You then setup a user with admin rights
for yourself to use. So you always will have two admin user accounts, yours
and the hidden account. The hidden account shows up when you boot to safe
mode. This is what your seeing. You must have renamed the hidden account
from administrator to firefox when you tried to reinstall. It also looks
like it didn't go right and the hidden admin got ownership of some files and
such. To fix ownership open help and support and search for ownership, click
on Take ownership of a file or folder.

kseidman wrote:
> I am the only user on an XP Home Edition computer. Control
> Panel|User Accounts indicates that I am the only Administrator.
> However, when I boot up in Safe Mode, another Administrator called
> Foxfire appears. (Foxfire is the name of my computer). I don't know
> if this is normal?
>
> The PROBLEM is that sometimes (don't know why or when this will
> happen) when I create or move folders (e.g. by dragging a folder from
> my second hard drive to my C drive) this other administrator
> (Foxfire) is the only one with access to it. In normal XP bootup
> mode I cannot access, or delete these "Foxfire" owned folders. I
> recently discovered that if I am in Safe Mode I can change the owner
> to me (kseidman, Administrator) and then when I go back to normal
> mode, I can access and delete these folders.
>
> Is any of this normal behaviour? What I would like is to eliminate
> the Foxfire Administrator or, if this is not possible, to gain
> control of all folders, files, now and forevermore on my computer!
>
> BTW, in the first few months of owning my Dell computer with XP I had
> numerous XP blue screen of death crashes (corrupted system files,
> etc) and had to re-install XP. Once I also re-formatted the hard
> drive. Perhaps this Foxfire Admininstrator is some left over from a
> previous XP installation?
>
> Help greatly appreciated,
> Thanks,
>
> Ken

[Alex Nichol]

kseidman wrote:

>I am the only user on an XP Home Edition computer. Control Panel|User Accounts indicates that I am the only Administrator. However, when I boot up in Safe Mode, another Administrator called Foxfire appears. (Foxfire is the name of my computer). I don'
t know if this is normal?
>
>The PROBLEM is that sometimes (don't know why or when this will happen) when I create or move folders (e.g. by dragging a folder from my second hard drive to my C drive) this other administrator (Foxfire) is the only one with access to it. In normal XP b
ootup mode I cannot access, or delete these "Foxfire" owned folders. I recently discovered that if I am in Safe Mode I can change the owner to me (kseidman, Administrator) and then when I go back to normal mode, I can access and delete these folders.

As well as your regular user admin account there is a reserve one for
emergencies, that only shows up in a Safe Mode boot. That is normal: I
have not p[reviously heard of it being given any name other than
'Administrator' though


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (remove the D8 bit)