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You can do interesting things with Windows 8 and 7. For example you can tether your connection to other devices without installing 3rd party software, enable Administrator account etc.
Removing password without Administrator access.
This can be done easily with ntpasswd. It also has other features, but I only recommend using the “blank password” / “remove password” function as it’s the most working one. This feature should work with Windows XP too, but I have only tried it with 7 and 8.
I don’t type usage instructions here, because ntpasswd has enough good documentation and it’s easy to use anyway.
Enabling Administrator account
Administrator is root (Linux/Mac/*NIX SuperUser) of Windows. Some people prefer to be able to login as root/Administrator directly in emmergency or if they need to do something as root quickly.
To enable this account open cmd.exe as Administrator.
Windows 8: You can do this by going to ModernUI by pressing Windows button or activating the hot corner on bottom left. Then start typing (or type) “cmd”, right click “Command Prompt” which appears and select “Run as Administrator”.
Windows 7: Open Start menu by pressing Windows button or by clicking the start menu. Then start searching for “cmd” and you should receive result “cmd.exe” or “Command Prompt”. Right click it and select “run as Administrator”.
Now you are on cmd.exe which is running as Administrator. Next you must find out what is the Administrator account called. It depends on which language Windows was originally installed.
With English installation the Administrator account is “Administrator” and in Finnish installation “Järjestelmänvalvoja”. You can see the list of users including Administrator by running
net user(Todo: add example output).
Now you should know the name of Administrator account and you can enable it running:
net user Administrator /active:yesWhere you replace “Administrator” with the account which is Administrator in “net user” e.g. Järjestelmänvalvoja. If you want to disable it, simply change “/active:yes” to “/active no”.
Administrator doesn’t have password set by default so now go to Control Panel and Users. Select “manage other user” and then select “Administrator” and set password for it.
If you cannot think any password for it, you can use same password as with your own account in emmergency like Linux Mint is doing. It uses the password of the user which was created in installation as root password. With Ubuntu root account is disabled by default and it can be enabled by running “sudo passwd root” and setting password.
You must set password for Administrator, because that account can do everything without User Access Control (UAC) prompts!
Remember also to not use the Administrator account for general use.
Tethering connection without 3rd party tools
This can be done with netsh, but the network doesn’t have connection to internet at first.
First open cmd.exe as Administrator (activating administrator account). This requires normal user with administrator rights.
First allow tethering to be used and set SSID and password and start the network.
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=mynetwork key=mypassword
netsh wlan start hostednetworkNOTE: If you get error about missing svchost service or something else, press Windows + R and run “services” and enable “Wireless autoconfiguration” or something like that.
NOTE2: If you get other error, disable the network card in adapter settings and enable it again. Then run “netsh wlan start hostednetwork again”.
NOTE3: If nothing helps, run “netsh wlan show drivers” and ensure that your network card supports hosted/virtual networks.
TODO: I must find out how to not have the network WPA2 secured. Leaving key=mypassword out doesn’t seem to work.
Getting internet access to the new network.
Right click the network icon on the taskbar and select “open network and sharing center”. Then select “change adapter settings” in the window which opens and right click the connection which you want to share. Click properties and then “Sharing”.
Share the connection using your new network which is something like “Wireless Local Area Connection 2” and uncheck “let others manage this connection”, but remember to keep “let other users access the internet using this connection” checked. Then click “OK” or “apply” and your tethered network has internet access.
To see devices which are currently connected to the network, run
netsh wlan show hostednetworkThe hosted network gets disabled on reboot, but you can enable it again by running “netsh wlan start hostednetwork” (as administrator). You don’t need to do anything else, it remembers the shared network connection.
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