Solved: Lost administrator rights in Windows 11 (2023 fix)

When you install Windows 11 for the first time, the first account you create on the system is the administrator account. Using this administrator account, you can create other administrative accounts or standard level user accounts. But if somehow you lost the administrative rights on your system then this becomes a crucial problem because you cannot perform mandatory operations on the system. This article will show you how you can fix lost administrator rights in Windows 11.

The symptoms of losing administrative rights are quite common. In this case, whenever you try to open any program or app that requires administrative privileges, you get the User Account Control confirmation prompt with missing Yes button. There is no place to enter the administrative account username and password and only No button is available, as shown in the below screenshot.

The problem of losing administrative rights become worst when you have the only account on the system that is no longer administrative account. Now you cannot create any other administrator account nor you can modify existing accounts to set them at administrative level. So how to fix this problem?

Well, we have got two solutions for you which you can follow to fix this problem.

Solved: Lost administrator rights in Windows 11

Fix lost administrator rights using Settings app

In this method, we will be restoring our system to an earlier created point. We are assuming that this restore point has been created even before losing the administrative rights. Hence, if we do the System Restore, we should be able to restore the admin rights back. Kindly follow these steps exactly as they are described. If you don’t have any restore points created before, refer FIX 2 instead.

• Press + X keys and select Settings.
• Go to Accounts > Sign-in options.
• Under Recovery options, click on Restart now next to Advanced startup.

• In the popup window appearing next, click on Restart now button.

• When your system restarts, under Choose an option click on Troubleshoot then Advanced options. Under Advanced options, click on System Restore.

• When System Restore wizard opens, click on Next button and then select your previously created System Restore point and hit Next.

• Once you have confirmed all the details for system restore, click Finish. In the confirmation prompt appearing next, click Yes to continue.

• Now that the System Restore will be working and this may take time depending upon data on your system. Once it is done, you will see System Restore completed successfully message. You can now restart your system.

Once your system restarts, you will find that administrative rights are now back.

Fix lost administrator rights using registry

• Go to Advanced recovery options and select Command Prompt this time.

• When the Command Prompt opens, type regedit and press Enter key, open Registry Editor in Windows Recovery Environment.

• In the Registry Editor window, highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and click File  then Load hive. When Load hive popup comes, go to C: drive > Windows > System32 folder > Config folder and open it inside Config folder you will find a file named ‘sam’ select it and then click Open. In the Load hive key name type REM_SAM and click OK.

• Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\REM_SAM\SAM\Domains\Accounts\Users\000001F4 and locate F named registry binary DWORD value. Double click on it to edit its value.

• Very carefully, go to line 38, place the cursor in right side of value 11 and press delete key on the keyboard.

• Now type the value as 10 and then click OK.

• Now you can close the Registry Editor and then Command Prompt and then reboot your system.

When you restart your system after this, you will find that you have built-in administrative account enabled on the system. You can use this built in administrator account to create other administrator accounts or modify the existing ones add convert them to administrative accounts.

In this way, you will be able to get your administrative rights back.

Video fix

If you have any question about above methods, you can check out following video for the live demonstration:

That’s it!

Also check: Lost Administrative Rights In Windows 10.