How to remove 'Administrator:' from the command promt title

Question

In Windows Vista, is there a way to remove the word 'Administrator:' from the title of a command prompt window?

The 'title' command just updates the part after 'Administrator:', so that will not do.

Answer 1

There are another two possibilities here:

• Use the cmd.exe from Windows XP
• Modify the MUI data for cmd.exe:

You’ll need to modify the MUI data file for cmd.exe. This file is called cmd.exe.mui, and is located in C:\Windows\System32\en-US on a standard 32-bit, United States installation. For other languages, the en-US will be different, and for 64-bit installations, you’ll need to modify both the version in System32 and in SysWOW64.

• First off, take ownership of cmd.exe.mui. Right-click on the file, click Advanced on the security tab. On the Owner tab, click Edit, and select the Administrators account.

• Now, give access to modify the file. Go back into the properties for the file, click Edit on the Security tab, click Add, and enter Administrators, then make sure they have the Full Control option set to Allow.

• Using a hex editor, resource editor, or other editor of your choice, modify the string in the file from “Administrator: %0” to “ %0” (That’s two spaces before the %0, don’t forget the null character at the end).

• Save the file

• Run mcbuilder.exe (this could take some time to run)

• Reboot the computer.

(from this thread - note, you can use a space, but it has to be something.)

Answer 2

While it has been proven not to solve the problem in this bug, not everyone knows you can use the title command and set the title to whatever you want it to be.

Answer 3

runas /trustlevel:0x20000 "cmd /k title My Awesome Command Prompt"

Answer 4

Run the command prompt as a standard user (ie be logged in as a standard user).

If needed, you can always use runas to run commands as any other user including whatever adminstrative users you have.

Answer 5

Why do you want to remove it? It's there to signify that you're running an elevated command prompt as opposed to a regular command prompt.

If you've disabled the UAC then you might see this on all your command prompts as you're basically always running in elevated mode

Answer 6

I haven't tried this, but what about creating an Administrator account called "a", and then changing your CMD shortcut to be a "runas," calling CMD with "a" as the user.

That will shorten up the name so you can fit the real title nicely in the taskbar (which you indicated was your goal for doing this).

Answer 7

I set out to solve this problem for the same reason as Eli (I couldn't distinguish my multiple cmd windows without alt+tabing through them all) by writing a small utility that changes the window title using the win32api method SetWindowText().

I quickly discovered that wouldn't suffice because any time the command window changed titles (like when you run an application) it quickly restored the Administrator: text. So I wrote a background process that polled all top level windows for command prompts on a regular interval.

It's not the greatest solution but it's definitely easier and safer than the solutions provided by CRB. @CRB, please don't take offesnse, modifying the MUI data is the better answer, but Zerker's post proves the solution isn't for everyone :)

Answer 8

I stopped using the standard cmd.exe shell, and am now using Console2 which does not have this 'administrator' problem.

Answer 9

The instructions on updating the cmd.exe.mui worked well for me, although I had to search for the Hex pattern 41 00 64 00 6d 00 69 00 6e 00 69 00 73 00 74 00 since my editor doesn't let me search files that are combined unicode and binary. I deleted the "Administrator: %0" part, saved the file, and ran mcbuilder. I did not have to reboot - the next window I opened was fine. Thanks for the help!

Don't forget to make a backup of cmd.exe.mui in case you mess up!