I just bought a new computer with Windows 2000.
I am having trouble as the first page that comes up to log into
windows is the Administrator Account. It seems when all my programs &
settings were installed, it was done under this account.
When I set up my own account in my name and logged into Windows 2000 
all the settings, icons, pages etc.that were originally installed
under the Administar's account are missing.
I have asked people but most don't have Windows 2000. When I spoke to
the place that built my computer they said I may need to re-install
Windows 2000!!!!!!!!!!
I am afraid that I will lose all that was installed on Administrator's
account.
As I did not transfer any programs, sites or settings from my old
computer to this new one, I'm afraid to re-install Windows 2000.
The booklet keeps saying I should use my own account..........

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Request for Question Clarification by rmn-ga on 11 Sep 2002 18:02 PDT

What is the access level of your account (administrator, power user, user, etc)?

I am the only user of my Windows 2000 PC, so I never actually bothered
to set up any users other than Administrator and everything has worked
fine simply using Administrator for everything. You will probably get
a more comprehensive answer from someone else though.

I'm the only user too........... but I read something about security
problems using just the Administrator account...........could they
mean that if there is more than one person using the computer????????
Hmmmmmmm...... I never thought of it in that way.........

post the problem here www.computingcentral.msn.com there are a lot of
very knowledgeable people that can help you.

Steph, just so you know, me and most of my (fairly computer saavy)
friends all use Windows 2000 on our primary PC's.  We are the only
users of them, and we all use the administrator account.  I just set
up my girlfriend with Win2k, and she uses the administrator account. 
Unless you want to prevent yourself from doing power-user type stuff,
this is the best way to go, in my opinion.  And this way, when
something "serious" needs to be done on your machine, you won't have
the problem of trying to remember how to log in as administrator,
since that's how you'll regularly log in.

Perhaps a google answers researcher will tell you how to "move" or
"copy" the preferences and settings from administrator to any new
accounts you may decide to create...

My access is Administrator.......... but I consequently created my own
account under " power users "............ That is the account where I
lose everything if I log on with that........
Basically, I just want to know if logging in as Administrator keeps
all my stuff secure, as booklet leads me to question security. As
well, I have a couple of pop up things say something about
security..........
As I don't know much about computers ( make that.... I know nothing ),
I am concerned about security with using the Administrators
Log-in.......

If you don't run a webserver, or any other kind of server, and you
have all the latest updates and service packs from Windows Update,
then you shouldn't really have a security problem logging in with the
Administrator account. Having a strong password (mix of
uppercase/lowercase letters +numbers/symbols) and a decent virus
scanner is always a good idea as well.

My other problem with Administrator account is that there is no
password!!!!!!!
Dialogue box appears and w/o entering a password I get into
Windows......... I just click okay.......w/o a password & voila there
I am in Windows 2000..... Thats my original concern.........seems that
administrtaor acct came with pre-programmed password or
something...............Is that secure???????????? I am really
wondering about that part........... click okay......... no password
entered.........?????????

Yep, it looks like it's just been set up with a blank
password....which really isn't secure at all if anyone else has access
to your computer ;) It's been a while since I've used 2k, so I'll give
you a couple ways that I think will let you change the password. I
believe pressing ctrl-alt-delete will bring up a dialog box with a
bunch of choices, one of them should be change password. You can try
that.

Password changes could be disabled. If so, you need to go into the
Control panel then Administrative tools and then Computer Management
and then I think it's Local users you need to pick. Find the
Administrator account in there and look at its properties sheet to
enable password changes.

The reason your icons disappear in non-administrator accounts is
because Windows 2000 maintains a separate desktop and start menu for
each profile. There is a relatively easy way to manually fix this
problem that I can outline for you if you're still interested. Like
the other commentators, however, I just use my admin account all the
time, thus I don't have to worry about the problems you describe. I am
not aware of any security issues with using the admin account, but you
should change the blank password. The only reason you might want to
have multiple accounts is if other people are using the computer and
you want to restrict their powers (e.g. not allow them to run certain
programs).

By the way, this is not a problem that requires reinstalling Windows 2000.