It's there so that in case you are the only person left on the planet, you are not bored and have someone to talk to. There is a feature built into every version of Windows since NT 4.0 which detects how many people are left on the planet and awakens the administrator account if it's only you. I had a book about it once that described the history of the development of this feature, but it got misplaced.

You can have different start up programs (system management tools) for that account, along with a clear desktop, no icon clutter, etc. Keep the admin stuff separate from the regular stuff. It's a useful feature.

If you're running a server OS it's even better because you can be logged in simultaneously to your admin and regular accounts. You can even create multiple accounts for different functions - work, gaming, file hosting etc. and quickly switch or RDP between them as necessary.

This is also a security feature. The normal user will run most of the programs, and those programs (malicious as they may be) will never have admin rights per default and hence can't cause so much damage. The admin user will only be invoked when necessary, e.g. when changes to system files have to be made.

It can also be unlocked (if your disk isn't encrypted) in case you lose track of your password.

Probably for backwards comparability as well.
Up till Vista, Administrator was the default user account.
After XP it was considered a big security risk as it was a given that the PC would have a login called administrator, just need to crack the password, which is why it is now disabled by default. But I guess programs could still expect a administrator account for something.

You can delete it if you want or care, It is still a nice safety net for corporate PC's though, even in its disabled state.

chinny22 wrote:

Probably for backwards comparability as well. Up till Vista, Administrator was the default user account. After XP it was conside […]
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Probably for backwards comparability as well.
Up till Vista, Administrator was the default user account.
After XP it was considered a big security risk as it was a given that the PC would have a login called administrator, just need to crack the password, which is why it is now disabled by default. But I guess programs could still expect a administrator account for something.

You can delete it if you want or care, It is still a nice safety net for corporate PC's though, even in its disabled state.

How to delete the administrator account?

You don’t. It would be like deleting the “root” account in Linux.

Muz wrote:

How to delete the administrator account?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/f … 5c-aa13d65bff51

I'm assuming Win8 and above are pretty much the same I haven't bothered since windows 7
I used to rename the administrator account, but now I dont even bother with that and just log in as adminstrator and delete the account created during startup.
It's not like I have to secure my home computers against rest of my family, we all use the same login.