Shockwave says I need administrator rights (which I already have).

[Muffins]

I tried to install shockwave player 10 (on XP SP2) but it keeps telling me I need administrator rights. This is a home machine, however I'm not using the "administrator" account, but User Accounts says I am in fact in the administrator group. I don't know the Administrator password nor does anyone else who uses this computer. I saw an option to reset the administrator password, however it might result in lost data.

What's further puzzling is that, while trying to install Windows Media Player 11, I get an error that says setup was unable to complete... and searching around the internet I noticed this was also a common symptom of not having full admin rights.

Any suggestions?

[F1]

You will need full admin rights to complete the task. There is a difference between an administrator account and a user account with admin rights. Resetting the admin password should not result in any loss of data.

[Muffins]

Well, now that I've done that I can't figure out how to log on as the administrator. When my computer starts up, it automatically brings me to the desktop (because there is only one user - which for the record has the words "Computer Administrator" under it when I went to "Log Off" to try and go log onto the admin account). I tried running internet explorer (7) as the admin (using Run As...), however I got the same error.

So how do I log on completely as the Administrator?

[jholland1964]

In Windows XP Home Edition, you can login as built-in Administrator in Safe Mode only. For XP Professional, press CTRL + ALT + DEL twice at the Welcome Screen and input your Administrator password in the classic logon window that appears.

[TurcoLoco]

Also, if the 'Secondary Logon' service is not disabled, you could right-click on the executable in question then click on Run as.. and enter the Administrator login credentials which would run the installation as if the actual Administrator was running it.

~TL