HELP - Vista tells me I'm NOT the Administrator

Ex_Brit

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Staff member
I am desperately trying to install some Widcomm software for my Motorola Bluetooth PC850 dongle which HAS to be installed by the Administrator (not a user with Admin rights) so I enabled the Admin account and signed into it.

I get this - even there!!!
CantinstallWidcomm001.jpg


The thing is, I had it installed perfectly well before Windows tried to update the driver and I stupidly said yes. Windows installed the wrong driver and the entire machine seized up. I managed to extricate myself from that one in Safe Mode & uninstall everything, but now I'm met with this boondoggle. I'm not quite sure how to take the insult. The Administrator is suddenly not one according to Vista.
I checked permissions and me (Peter), Administrator, Administrators, and System all have full permission.

All I can do perhaps dlete this download and try another one, but why would Windows behave this way?
To add insult to injury, it disabled my M$ Bluetooth too so am reduced to using my old klunker of a keyboard and mouse.
I feel that perhaps I'm going to have to reinstall Vista..dammit.
 
Ignore.....sigh....!! Apparently when signed in as THE Administrator one cannot do the compatibility "for all users" thing.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRR I swear I will kill my machine one of these days (it most definitely IS alive!). Why can't Windows errors be more explicit?

a_hit3.gif
 
LOL... Good luck my friend! Don't forget to picture it after you kill it :smile: I like to enjoy he view... no, really, I'm sorry about your problem...

If nothing else works I suggest you write to M$ and tell them that Vista is stupid and you want your money back :happy: .
 
I'm having trouble coding EasyBCD 1.61 because Windows Vista even from within a virtual machine is constantly BSODing on afd.sys.

Thank god for Linux.
 
Well, I had to reinstall Vista. Got it all up and running with all the right drivers........and now it will only boot into Safe Mode.

I give up. I'm going back to an abacus, enough of this computer lark...LOL

It looks like perhaps I'm going to have to bite the bullet and only use my older and less powerful graphics card...if indeed that is the culprit. I have no idea of course what to do next.

In regular mode Vista gets past the scrolling bar, but then just black screen and nothing after that, no matter how long I wait.

I'm in XP right now, at least THAT'S working...!!
 
I've knocked on my head a few times...that's as good as wood. Please don't say that!! What would cause a system to boot only into safe mode?
 
Anything.
If I boot into safe mode, I don't get any BSODs. Dunno why, since afd.sys is a core Windows component.

That's Vista for you.
 
I'm not getting BSOD's. I can boot into safe mode fine. In regular mode it just stops loading after the scrolling bar and gives exactly nothing in the way of errors.
 
I've done more research. This is happening to a lot of people with x1600 series cards, especially the AGP version. I've found out how to delete unwanted drivers in safe mode which may help when I reinstall Vista. Right now I don't have it installed.
 
You should get nVidia GeForce card, well, you don't plan to change your card for a while... ok, next time, buy nVidia card :wink: And you'll never have that kind of problems again :wink: Oh and somehow, I like AMD more than Intel :smile: so, AMD + nVidia = good choice :smile:
 
This may be useful to anyone, especially those with ATI Radeon x1600 series cards.

Basically this is what I've done. I took the installation option of not gathering updates first and installing them along with Vista. The minute Vista opened up for the first time I went to System Protection and on the Hardware tab told Vista to never detect new hardware. Then went to Windows Updates and set it to notify me of updates before downloading or installing them.

To get rid of drivers (in Safe Mode) that may have messed anything up you can either call up the Device Manager and merely roll them back to the previous version, or uninstall of course, or, if you are particularly au fait with the way things go, delete them from either C:\Windows\Inf or C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore I'd only do that if you know exactly what to look for.
If, like me, you installed Vista directly from the XP partition (this preserves drive letters and is the best method for a dual boot scenario) then your drive letter may be different, of course. In my case it's M:.
 
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