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What's the risk if I become the system user in windows XP

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closed as not a real question by r0ca, Mehper C. Palavuzlar, Sathya, Diago Nov 8 '10 at 22:23


2 Answers 2

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More information please. Do you mean the Systems Administrator? And risks to what degree (i.e. viruses)? If it is viruses and you are going to be the systems administrator, than the risks are significantly higher due to the fact that you don't need admin rights to install programs (viruses) on your computer by just going to websites or clicking on an advertisement.

When setting your computer up (as a smart computer user) always make yourself a user account and an admin account. This is so that if you need to install a program, use the admin account for that only. Use the user account to do your everyday computer using (i.e. email, games, etc.).

If you are indeed talking about the "system user" which I don't think you are, the risks are even higher than the administrator account. If you become the system user, you can delete things like the system 32 folder, or anything. I do not recommend becoming the system user in any circumstance. Any user of an OS should only have the maximum power of being the administrator, which is why it is a little difficult to stumble into being the system user.

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If you mean login as SYSTEM, you can't:

The System Account

System is a pseudo-account for running system processes and handling system-level tasks. You can't change the settings for the System account with the user administration tools. Users can't log on to a computer with this account.

(from Built-in accounts, it's for NT but still applies to newer versions of Windows and other built-in accounts like Local Service or Network Service).

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You can, with psexec -s (and on XP, the custom service and at /interactive tricks) –  grawity Nov 8 '10 at 21:46
That methods make a process run under the system account, but still you can login with SYSTEM (although maybe xhesi was talking about running processes in that way). –  Alberto Martinez Nov 9 '10 at 1:04
