cannot get administrator privileges after upgrade

Can you give the output of:

groups; echo; lsb_release -a: uname -a

Thanks

I screwed up after I upgraded by trying to create a root account in users and groups instead reactivating the root account password via the terminal. I think the source of my confusion was that the window manager was not working in root after I upgraded and I did not understand this. Now I got rid of the false "root" account and reactivated the real one in the terminal (sudo passwd root). Then I fixed the window manager by changing the visual effect setting from"none" to "normal" (there are at least four other fixes to this, but one is all you need). So now everything works except the "administrator" setting in users and groups. You can set it but it doesn't make you an administrator. At least not in mine. But if you activate root via the terminal you don't need this.

Just a couple more comments. Changing visual effects from none to normal has to be done each time you log on unless you check the option "remember currently running processes next time you log on". But a better way is to add /usr/bin/gnome-wm to startup applications. This seems to be a permanent fix (at least so far). The other thing is that the administrator setting on accounts created in user and groups apparently just lets the user use sudo in the terminal, which is not quite the same thing as root privileges.

On Ubuntu root account isn't activated and supported.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

> remember currently running processes

Session saving is gone since Natty and can be reenabled via env variable in Precise.
Thus the output of request #1 would be interesting.

To toggle visual effects in a window manager certainly doesn't need admin privileges, sufficient options for legacy purpose may be:
metacity --replace
compiz --replace
and put the preferred one in startup applications.