I find that adding in the 'nt authority\system' account in (as an admin) prior to removing the builtin\admin stops a lot of the pain with 3rd party backup solutions etc.
Here are some more gotchas. Some I have run into and some just came up when I searched for "Builtin Administrators" in the MS Knowledge Base with SQL Server 200 selected as the product.
PRB: SQL Server Full-Text Search Does Not Populate Catalogshttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;317746
BUG: IsAlive check does not run under the context of the BUILTIN\Administrators account in SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Editionhttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;291255
Be especially careful on clusters. See the following article for more information on this topic in relation to clustered instances of SQL Server:
INF: How to impede Windows NT administrators from administering a clustered instance of SQL Serverhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/263712/EN-US/
There were some other articles that came up in the search but I did not include the ones marked "FIX" or "INF" except for the one clustering article. Basically, make sure everything is working right before you remove this group account. That way, if anything breaks, you know exactly why. Then you can put the group back in and research the proper solution.
The "Via group membership" option disappeared after I changed the setting. I thought it was odd as well, but I was just glad the problem was solved!
Interesting article. Now that I accidently deleted the the BUILTIN/Admin, how can I add it back in?
Thanks for the help
Bill
I've made a point of removing it from new servers once SQL is installed and the service and agent startup accounts are properly set.
That way it is out before any databases (other than master etc) or users are created so they are created with the rights and logins they need.
Interesting. Thanks for your comments, especially on the "Through Group Membership" issue.
