Renaming Windows 2000 Server Administrator User Account

  • Thread starter Thread starter fischste
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fischste

To secure my Win2k servers, I want to rename
the "Administrator" user account. Everyone states it's as
easy as selecting the account and renaming. I've verified
all service accounts do not use the "admin" account so
that's not an issue.

Is it as easy as this? I do not want to create problems by
just renaming the account. If there is a better way,
please share your information.

Thanks!
 
The "administrator" account should be used very minimally and have a strong
password. If you are confident that there are no services, scripts, scheduled tasks,
etc that use it then go ahead and change it. You should also enable account log on
events on those servers and monitor for failures. --- Steve
 
How about renaming the 'administrator' account in a domain context (active
directory) for a server farm? Will my other member servers, esp Exchange
2000, get affected???

thanks in advance
 
The "administrator" account is supposed to be highly protected and
minimally used [if someone can pull the password from a domain member
machine, they control the domain]. Windows 2003 actually gives the option to
disable it. I have not configured Exchange 2000, so I can not comment on
that. I would be surprised if it needed access to the administrator account.
Assuming it does not and the network was designed properly with regard to
the sensitivity of the administrator account, I would say yes you could go
ahead and change it. But I do not know that and can not recommend that you
do it for a server farm. You need to verify that it is not being used before
making the change and ask yourself what is the worst that could happen if
there was a problem and how long would it take to restore to normal. --
Steve
 
Yes it will effect it. Make sure you going into the
services of thos server and change the username as well.

Doug
 
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