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I'm running Windows 10 with 3 local accounts.

  1. My Non-administrator account - Main account I use
  2. My Administrator account - Which I usually just use for UAC prompts
  3. Someone else's Administrator account - An account I don't know the password to, so don't want this to be the default UAC account that comes up.

Every time I'm running account #1 and get a UAC prompt, it asks me for the password for account #3, which I don't know. So I have to hit "More Choices" -> "Account #2". Is there anyway to make account #2 the default when this prompt comes up?

EDIT: How is this too broad? I want a very specific menu prompt to have a different default than it does. It defaults to account #3. I want it to default to account #2.

Jarvin
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  • Why there are #2 and #3 present in your own PC? – Biswapriyo Nov 15 '18 at 04:20
  • @Biswapriyo #2 is required since there must be an administrator account and it should be one I have access to. #1 is for security since it blocks some types of privilege escalation by running a non administer account. #3 is for another person who also uses my computer. – Jarvin Nov 15 '18 at 05:35
  • @Jarvin - Please edit your question instead of submitting comments. It's not clear the reason you have a privileged account you don't know the password to on your personal machine. Please provide all relevant information in the question body instead of a comment. – Ramhound Nov 15 '18 at 05:38
  • @Ramhound Is that more clear? I thought the fact that it was someone else's account is pretty self explanatory. – Jarvin Nov 15 '18 at 05:40
  • Is this your own computer or a company/corporate computer? Is the third account local? I know you say it is but can you please confirm this. Have you tried removing that third account from the computer if it is a local account? – music2myear Nov 20 '18 at 18:47
  • @music2myear It's my own computer. All 3 accounts are local. My wife would be upset if I removed her account. Not really a valid option. I'm sure it would then prompt me for the account #2 password instead like it did before I added account #3, but it shouldn't be required to entirely remove account #3 in order to make account #2 the default in that prompt. – Jarvin Nov 24 '18 at 05:32

2 Answers2

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There seems to be no explicit setting/registry value for the default admin user that is being shown in the UAC dialog (the consent.exe process).

However, the order in which the admin accounts are displayed is quite simple: it's alphabetically.

The first alphabetically sorted account will be the default account the UAC dialog asks the password for. The accounts are sorted by username, not by display name.

So if e.g. you create an administrator account named Admin, it will be chosen by UAC over the Administrator account.

enter image description here

lauxjpn
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  • This is not true. I know because it was working for me until I re-installed windows. Before re-installing I had 2 admin accounts gman, and gregg. gregg always showed up. – gman Aug 07 '20 at 19:35
  • @gman I am pretty sure my answer is true on all current versions of Windows (10 and Server). I did check all registry calls issued by consent.exe before posting the answer. The accounts will be sorted by username, not by display name, and the first one will be used as the default. Feel free to test the behavior yourself. However, if this behaves differently on your machine, please post a screenshot of the UAC dialog and the version of Windows you are using. Or even better, if you know of a registry or GPO setting to force a specific admin account as the UAC default, please post that one. – lauxjpn Aug 07 '20 at 23:49
  • I can't post a screenshot since I reinstalled. I'm just trying to get the machine to behave as it did before. – gman Aug 08 '20 at 03:15
  • What version of Windows were you using? Were the display names of the user accounts the same as the actual usernames? – lauxjpn Aug 08 '20 at 12:53
  • Alphabetical is incorrect. It seems that mot of the time (but not always!) it defaults to the 'current user' which is no help at all. – 0xG Mar 25 '24 at 19:58
  • @0xG I checked my answer again on Windows 10 (22H2) with the same result as before. All accounts are strictly sorted alphabetically by username (not display name). I verified this by creating 3 admin accounts in the following order: "Bob" (display name "Johnson, Bob"), "Alice" (display name "Smith, Alice") and "Charlie" (display name "Davis, Charlie"). I then triggered the UAC dialog, which listed them in the following order: "Alice", "Bob" and "Charlie". If you think you found a different case, please post instructions to reproduce this behavior on a vanilla Windows 10 installation. – lauxjpn Mar 26 '24 at 11:32
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This isn't making the UAC screen display with a set user but it gets around the problem.

I have a work PC running Windows 10 22H2. I have an ordinary user and a admin account but the company does not want us to log on with an admin account. (It is possible to log on with the admin account but they monitor this. Plus logging in with a non-admin account is a good thing.)

Just for opening task manager I had to click "More choices" then "Use a different account" then I had to type the username and password. Tedious and irritating even when you get adept at using the tab key and the space bar.

I logged on to my PC with the local admin account and then set up fingerprint logon with my pinky. (My normal user account uses thumb and index finger.)

Now when I get a UAC prompt I just put my pinky on the fingerprint reader and that works.

(And I leave soul destroying hell for heaven :D )

PeterO
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