My little brother has a computer with vista, and he isn't too computer savvy, and I've been trying to help him over the phone, but because I don't have vista we see different things on our screens, and I get stuck, and he gets confused.

He is trying to install a game on his computer, and when he tries to open the installation file it says "system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation". When he right clicks the file, "Run as Administrator" is not there. He is the only user of the computer, and is absolutely the administrator. I read about with vista that even the administrator isn't the true administrator that is programmed into the operating system, and you can change this by running a certain file, but when i told him to type in that file, his computer tells him it doesn't exist. Google is no help, and we're both stuck. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Is the installation file on a CD or on his HD?

He could probably start it from the command prompt if he ran that as administrator. Search for cmd.exe , right click on that, left click on run as administrator, CD to the directory where the installation file is and run setup.exe or whatever the name of it is.

What is the game's name?

Not something I'd recommend as a permanent setting, but he could enable the built-in -- albeit disabled -- Administrator's account as a workaround.

- Click Start & type "cmd" in the search area, right click on "Command Prompt" & select 'Run as Administrator".

- In the command prompt type "net users Administrator /active:yes" & press Enter, you will get a confirmation as "The command completed successfully" ... see below!

- Click Start & type "regedit" in the search area and click Enter, navigate to: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
Double click on "FilterAdministratorToken" and set it to "0"

Log off & login with newly available account named "Administrator" & install the game.

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

I saved that one for future reference.
Thanks Sabertooth.

The installation file is on his hard drive,

to quapo, what does "CD to the directory where the installation file is" mean?

to sabertooth, when he types in "net users Administrator /active:yes" to his cmd as the admin, it doesn't say what you said it should, it gives him a menu with "User name" "Password" "Options" "Domain" as his options, each one being in brackets.

cd means change directory. If you don't know how to navigate to the file by command prompt, then it might be too hard to follow my suggestion.

Sabertooth's command line worked for me. It sounds like you didn't have the spacing right.

try: net user administrator /active:yes

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

I used users and it was fine.

ok, that time, he got it to say "The command completed successfully"

When he types regetid and opens it, it only shows the files: "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT" "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" "HKEY_USERS" "HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG" and when he clicks "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" the only file that appears is called "ab(default)"

I'm not sure what to tell him to do from there, I'm doing this over the phone, and I am not familiar with vista, so bear with my inability to mess around and figure little things out on my own. Thank you guys very much for the help.

He has to click on the + signs until he gets to the key . Then the key has to be modified the way sabertooth described.

As hinted by guapo, Vista's registry structure is navigated in the same way as the earlier version of Windows.

You need to expand the -- folder -- values as you try to get to the specific entry you are looking to modify by clicking on the (right facing) arrow next to each value.

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!