"Does anyone know how to make yourself administrator in Win 7?"

When it's installed, the first user created always has admin privileges. However all that means is that you will sometimes get asked for permission to perform certain operations. Not all programs know how to ask for that permission.

Sometimes, if I try to edit a file in a privileged folder, the editor simply says it couldn't save it, but doesn't have any way of asking for permission.

I got round that by copying the file to a folder in my home area (full read/write access) editing it there, then copying it back to the privileged folder. The copy operation (done by a desktop click and drag, not on the command line) then pops up a windows asking for permission, if you have administrator rights. I presume that if you don't have admin, it simply refuses to do it.