How do I grant myself admin access to a local SQL Server instance?

Question

I installed SQL Server 2008 R2 to my local machine. But, I can\'t create a new database because of rights (or lack of).

\"CREATE DATABASE PERMISSION D

Answer 1

I adopted a SQL 2012 database where I was not a sysadmin but was an administrator on the machine. I used SSMS with "Run as Administrator", added my NT account as a SQL login and set the server role to sysadmin. No problem.