Admin account issues, even root can't resolve!

Ok, I've experienced the (seemingly common) issue where an administrator on our Macbook has somehow changed to a "standard" account. Since this was the only admin account it left me in a lurch.
I googled the issue and came up with this: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1278
So, off I went and enabled the root account to effect the fix and all seemed to go well in that regard. However, when I actually logged in as root I was still unable to switch any of the accounts to administrator level. Even trying to create a new account with admin level privileges ends up only creating another "standard" account.
I then noticed that even the root account itself doesn't seem to have administrator privileges but shows up as "standard user" - this is contributing to the issue perhaps?
I've tried logging in as another "standard" user, going to the account setup screen and then unlocking using the root account credentials and password (which OSX seems to accept and unlocks accordingly) but there STILL doesn't seem to be sufficient rights to actually upgrade a users account level - whenever I check the "Allow user to administrate this computer" checkbox on an account (and I've tried multiple ones including newly created accounts) it immediately unchecks itself when I navigate away from (and back to) the account in question.
No matter what I've tried I cannot get ANY account (even trying to create a new temporary one) back to administrator privileges.
Help!

the directory services entry for your admin group is corrupted and needs to be replaced. see this post by biovizier for a solution.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9141393#9141393

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