organisation-owned-admin-account.md

How to get local administrator on an organisation-owned machine

Important

I am not liable or responsible for any damage caused by attempting this or any punishment by your organisation for bypassing organisation-owned monitoring software. Only use this at your own risk and ensure you have sufficient expertise to perform such a task.

Prerequisites

• Another machine, running Windows
• A USB flash drive with at least 8GB of free storage
• A stable internet connection
• Ensure USB-A ports are recognized by your machine for hardware other than peripherals (if you have an unlocked BIOS you may have to enable flash storage to be recognized first)
• Ensure that you are alright with losing all of the information currently on the device; this includes making sure you've backed up any files you deem important.

1. Getting Started

• Visit this website and follow the steps to download the Windows 10 Media Creation tool on your secondary machine.
• Ensure the USB Flash Drive is inside the machine and run the Media Creation Tool.
• Choose to create a custom installation instead of upgrading the current machine, as we need to install Windows on a different machine
• Install the Windows Installer on the USB Flash Drive that you previously inserted.
• Wait for the tool to complete the process and eject the drive

2. Installing Windows on your Target Machine

• Insert the Flash Drive into the machine you want to install Windows on.
• Restart the machine and press the key or combination of keys required to enter the boot manager. If you don't know this, you can probably look it up on Google.
• Choose the Flash Drive that has the Windows Installer as the Boot Drive and start the machine.
• Install Windows like normal, following the steps as needed, ensuring to format all drives into unallocated space as to delete any organisation-owned software that may be preinstalled.

Caution

Do not connect to a WiFi network yet. This will cause the machine to force you to connect to your Microsoft account, which will in turn allow your organisation to install the monitoring software. If you connected to a WiFi network from the setup screen, restart from the beginning of Chapter 2.

3. Bypassing Organisation Authorisation

• Open a terminal with Shift + Fn + F10

Tip

You may be able to directly run OOBE\BYPASSNRO in this terminal window. If your machine restarts successfully, then you should see an "I don't have internet button" in the WiFi connection page. If you do, then you can skip this chapter altogether, simply creating a normal local admin account. If not, then continue.

• Navigate to system32 and run ncpa.cpl (which opens network settings)
• Exit out from that menu into regular control panel
• Go into User Accounts and open Settings
• Create a new Administrator account from the permissions of defaultuser0
• Open a new terminal and run oobe/msoobe.exe to skip directly to the switch user/login screen
• You will see 2 users:
  • The user you created earlier (sign in as this user with the password you chose)
  • A user called defaultuser0 (this user has no password and you cannot login as them)
• Once you are on the desktop of your new account, then you may eject the USB and continue to Chapter 4.

4. Cleaning up and validation

• Restart your machine after signing in, this dissipates any leftover remains of defaultuser0.
• You may now connect to WiFi and ensure that all drivers for sound, pointers, keyboards etcetera are all working correctly
• Press Win + R on your keyboard, type cmd, press Enter, then run whoami and ensure that the current logged in user is a local administrator
• Allow Windows to perform any updates that are due
• Reinstate your (hopefully) backed up files on the machine

Note

If any of the parts in Chapter 4 seem incorrect and/or the account is not administrator, it is recommended to retry setup, starting from Chapter 2. If not, then you should be done! Enjoy administrator previleges and no monitoring/blocking software installed by your organisation on your organisation-owned machine.