Admin password works within admin account, not in standard/managed account

Question

My admin username and password work within my admin account but when I try to use them to override changes in my wife's or my daughter's standard / managed accounts it does not work. If I want to allow the application firewall or to change parental controls there is a request for an admin password. I know that the username and password are correct and the account has not been made a standard account by upgrading. I have read the other threads about the problems found by some users in 10.5 but this is different as it is definitely still an admin account, it just seems as if it not recognised as such outside the admin account itself.
Hope my description of this makes sense to someone. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Are your wife's or daughter's accounts using keyboard layouts that might be remapping some of the characters to a different key? Are any of these characters in the admin password?
Also, you should be using the "short" user name of the admin account when authenticating. Normally the short user name has no capital letters in it. Check the short user name in System Preferences -> Accounts.
Suggestion: Create a fourth account, make it an admin account, and then remove admin rights from your own user account. Unnecessarily running all the time as admin is bad security practice. Apple recommends only logging in to the admin account to do admin tasks, and doing all of your day-to-day work in a non-admin account.