Okay Terry. Let's check your UAC (User Account Control ) setting. Go back to Control Panel>User Accounts but this time click on the option to "Change User Account Control settings".

The correct (default) setting should look like this:

If the slide bar is all the way to the top, just use the mouse to slide it down to the correct setting. You could also try the next setting down, although I don't believe this would make all that much difference. Definitely do NOT go all the way to the bottom.

Just to help clarify; can you please give us some examples of when you are getting these admin messages, what you a doing, or trying to do?

As far as the disk image is concerned: I am a little confused over which disk (or disc) the error is referring to. Are you trying to create a Recovery disc (as in CD/DVD)? Or is it a hard disk error (as in your hard drive)?

Would it be possible to post a screenshot of the exact error message?

Cheers mate... Jim

It's not sounding good Terry. Will it let you you run a checkdisk?

1. Go to Start>Computer, right click on the entry for the C drive and select Properties.
2. In the properties window, open the Tools tab.
3. The first (top) item is called "Error-checking"... click on the Check now button.
4. The first option (Automatically fix file system errors) should be enabled by default.
5. Click the Start button
6. You'll receive a message that 'Windows can't check the disk while it's in use'... just click the Schedule disk check button and then restart Windows.

If still no go... go through the same procedure again but this time, in step 4, enable the second option Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors, then repeat steps 5 and 6.

I have no idea why Windows is not recognizing you as admin. It may have something to do with the system errors and a corrupted user profile. It is quite possible that 'fixing' the system errors may also fix your admin issue. Did you upgrade from XP to Windows 7 or is this a clean install?

Let us now how you get on with those diskcheck options.

Oh, and have you scanned for malware?

Hi Terry - At this stage, with the information I have from you, I'd say no, I doubt the system repair disc would be any help. You could always try it of course... if you do decide to give it a go, run it through the repair process 3 times.

Seeing how you cannot run checkdisk, I'd say that either the system is badly corrupted or the hard drive is on the way out. Seeing how you are not experiencing any other major issues, the former seems unlikely. That leaves us with the latter... impending hard drive failure. How old would you say the hard drive is?

Before you go any further: if you have any important personal data saved on the hard drive which is not backed up, I advise you to back it all up right now... before you go any further.

I would now try running sfc /scannow and see what that reports:

• Click on Start and type "cmd" into the search box (minus the quotation marks)
• Right click cmd.exe and select Run as administrator.
• In the command prompt type sfc /scannow (or copy and paste from here - note: there is a space between 'sfc' and the forward slash), and then hit Enter.

Let it run and at the end it will tell you what it found and what it did.

You should also definitely check the health of your hard drive. Here are links to a couple of free utilities which will do just that:

http://hddscan.com/ (portable but a little difficult to use, you'll probably need help with this one)

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html (requires installation but easier to use - scroll down the page just past HD Tune Pro and click on the link to download the free version, HD Tune version 2.55 - "hdtune_255.exe")

If you need help with either, just ask here.

Cheers mate... Jim

Terry,

Did you do the restart after the sfc scan? That should have replaced the corrupt system files. Also can you open up the CBS.log file in Notepad, save it as log.txt and attach it to a post?