Dear all, I have installed Win 7 64 bit and Sophos security endpoint 9. At some point that silly software has changed the permission of my account from "Administrator" to "Sophos Administrator" so that now my account has no Admin permissions at all. Unfortunately, it is the only account on the PC and all the attempts suggested in this and in other forums did not succeed. Now I cannot perform any operations that require admin privileges even if I boot in safe or recovery mode. Any help appreciated, thank you very much. Ciao Simone

Hi, in safe mode deinstall Sophos Security Endpoint 9. Look in to compmgmt.msc - Users - right click - properties - Member Of if you are in Administrator group. Also try enable Administrator account. If you have no privilegies to make this operation you can try this: Restart you computer by using Windows Vista/7 installation DVD Start the "Repair your computer" console Start "Command Prompt" Change directory to root of your operating system drive Rename C:\Windows\System32\utilman.exe to *.old Copy C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe to utilman.exe Restart to the normal operating system Reset any domain user password by issuing: NET USER user-name new-password You can also create new user with administrator privilegis with command NET USER

Thank you, I followed both ways but they failed 1. In safe mode (as well as in normal mode) I am unable to uninstall Sophos 2. I have booted from the DVD and restored, then replaced the utilman.exe with cmd.exe and rebooted. When I start the console (both with utilman and with cmd) I am not able to create/activate the Admin account with the command NET USER Adminstrator /ACTIVE:YES System error 5: access denied By the way: If I restore the system to a previous point will it restore the account settings as well? In such case I might try. Any help would be much appreciated Regards Simone

I solved in it this way: 1. Boot from the Windows 7 installation DVD 2. Choose repair system 3. Choose restore system to a previous point Fortunately the restore point reverted the modifcations made by the silly software Sophos. Definitely a badly designed software that modifies your account premissions. Now I learnt the lesson and activated the hidden Admin account with the NET USER command, just in case... So the lesson learnt is: 1. Be sure to activate at least another account with admin privileges (besides yours) 2. The system restore utility also restores your account settings (something I was not sure of) Thanks anyway Simone