You can also run programs “as” administrator, typically by right-clicking on their shortcuts and selecting “Run as administrator”. Instead, when needed, you’ll be prompted to allow administrative access via UAC (User Access Control). Most of the time, you already have administrator permission it’s just not enabled at all times for security reasons. Related Questions How do I get Administrator permission on my own computer? Just be sensitive to the data that you might find - and know you may be dealing with malware or other security issues you may not be able to see or recover from. This will at least let you examine the hard drive’s contents.Īs I’ve also said before, if you have physical access to a machine, then it is not secure.
I’ve covered this in: I’ve Lost the Password to My Windows Administrator Account, How Do I Get It Back? While this approach doesn’t always work, when it does, you simply set the administrator password and reboot into the installed operating system.
That fact that the previous owner didn’t know enough to securely erase their data doesn’t bode well for their security habits.
The right thing to do is to ignore anything on the hard disk, get a Windows install disk, and reformat and reinstall Windows from scratch. So lesson #2 is for you, the person acquiring a second-hand machine by whatever means. You have no idea what you have … not really. You have no idea how safety-smart the previous owner of that computer may or may not have been.
I’m not saying this is the case I am saying you can’t know that it’s not. They’re waiting for the opportunity to propagate, compromise, destroy, and generally cause havoc. How do you know the machine you just received isn’t chock-full of malware?įor all you know, there are viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware, and more on that machine, just waiting for you to do something: connect to your local network, share files with other machines, or log in to your bank account. I mean, do you really know what you have?
So lesson #1 is for whoever sold the computer in the first place: securely erase your data, or you run the risk of the computer’s new owner having access to all of it. They may think they’ve deleted the files they care about, but as I’ve discussed in many articles in the past, there are often sensitive remnants in other places, and even deleted data can sometimes be recovered. We hear stories all the time of second-hand computers that are sold or discarded with sensitive personal data still on the machine. It’s clear they did not take the extra step to securely delete all of the data on the hard drive. How do I know this? Because it still boots into Windows. The problem for the original owner is this: they’ve given away or sold the computer … and all of the data on it.