Account not acting as an administrator correctly

My account, david, is in the Administrators group on a Windows 7 machine.

I am still having problems with programs that I should be able to use, such as SQL Server. Specifically, my account seems to not have correct permissions when I am working.

I know with an Administrator account I should have full access. How can I force my account (david) to act like an admin account and have full access to everything?

You might have run into the famous Windows 7 gotcha, where programs launched by Administrator are still executed with reduced privileges. This means that although you are administrator, you don't have full access.

The solution is to use "Run as administrator" on programs that need elevation (even though you are the administrator).

If that is indeed the problem, you might set the properties of the affected executables to be "Run as administrator", so elevation always occurs. (Or disable UAC, but that is a negative solution.)