In
Windows NT,
Administrator is the highest user level (similar to the
root account in
Unix), whereby the entire system is
laid plain, and you can do almost
anything. It is a good idea not to run as
administrator (although it is really convenient if you are not going to
mess up). There are two types of
Windows NT admisitrators (
domain admins and
local admins). Domain admins have
administrator on all of the machines in a typical
domain deployment. This allows them to check up on and ensure the
safety of all of the
machines in the network. A local admin has all the rights over the
machine, ie: all of the local and non-domain files on the machine (it is possible to have things that a local admin can't touch on a machine). On a
domain controller, there is no
local machine, so domain admins are the same as local admins.
There is a higher account that administrator, and that is
SYSYTEM (you can view that in
taskmgr). Many times you cannot
kill tasks started by system because of the
protections against
shooting yourself in the foot (a
highly contested design strategy).