I have a big problem, my Vista home premium, will not accept any of my
passwords. i get an error message that says, "an unknown program is trying to
access your computor, please enter admin password"
Until last week, this did not happen, i used to get just a message, asking
if i knew where this program was from, and have i used it before.
I can not ever remember setting an admin password. I did though make back up
dvd's when i bought tis pc two months ago, would there be anything on there
to help? or any help from the more enlightened members of the forum would be
appreciated. Thanks.
PS i can not, do any restore or uninstall etc. because of the above.

“I can not ever remember setting an admin password.”

Start here:

Go to Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts
and see how the Administrator and Standard user accounts are set up.

--
oscar

....Right click is your best friend...


"novice19" wrote:

> I have a big problem, my Vista home premium, will not accept any of my
> passwords. i get an error message that says, "an unknown program is trying to
> access your computor, please enter admin password"
> Until last week, this did not happen, i used to get just a message, asking
> if i knew where this program was from, and have i used it before.
> I can not ever remember setting an admin password. I did though make back up
> dvd's when i bought tis pc two months ago, would there be anything on there
> to help? or any help from the more enlightened members of the forum would be
> appreciated. Thanks.
> PS i can not, do any restore or uninstall etc. because of the above.

Thanks Oscar,
My trouble is that even to enter admin, i need the password !!!

"oscar" wrote:

> “I can not ever remember setting an admin password.”
>
> Start here:
>
> Go to Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts
> and see how the Administrator and Standard user accounts are set up.
>
> --
> oscar
>
> ...Right click is your best friend...
>
>
> "novice19" wrote:
>
> > I have a big problem, my Vista home premium, will not accept any of my
> > passwords. i get an error message that says, "an unknown program is trying to
> > access your computor, please enter admin password"
> > Until last week, this did not happen, i used to get just a message, asking
> > if i knew where this program was from, and have i used it before.
> > I can not ever remember setting an admin password. I did though make back up
> > dvd's when i bought tis pc two months ago, would there be anything on there
> > to help? or any help from the more enlightened members of the forum would be
> > appreciated. Thanks.
> > PS i can not, do any restore or uninstall etc. because of the above.

Gotchya.

I’m at a disadvantage because I can’t see your system, so I’ll give some
suggestions and ideas. Forgive me if some of these suggestions are ones that
you already tried.

What you described to me is similar to what happens when using a standard
user account without administrator privileges or access to admin password.

But even if you were using a standard account, having the Administrator
Password should get you into the Administrator account. Assuming that you
forgot the password (or Vista no longer recognizes your password) these are
the 4 methods/tools that I’m aware of getting back Administrator control:

1) Try to retrieve (remember) your password from the Hint that Vista gives
you when it rejects your password. The hint is the one that you supplied in
the beginning when you setup the password.
2) Retrieve password with password reset disc that you might’ve made in the
beginning when you established your password. These discs are not the system
or files back discs that you might’ve made but a Password Reset Disc.
Sometimes, in stead of creating a password reset disc on CD, it could’ve been
created onto a flash drive. Jog any memories?
3) Use a software tool from the following website:
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

I’ve never used this tool so I don’t know how effective it is, but it’s been
mentioned by some web links regarding the discussion of lost Vista passwords.
It may be your last shot before #4.

4) Reinstall Vista.


I do not know of any easy workaround to retrieving a lost Administrator
password than what’s mentioned above. Vista is a very paranoid-security
driven OS, probably because of the security hammering that it took with XP.

You might want to hold out doing anything drastic in case another poster
offers a sure fix.

Hope this helps some…

Best of luck.

--
oscar

....Right click is your best friend...


"novice19" wrote:

> Thanks Oscar,
> My trouble is that even to enter admin, i need the password !!!
>
> "oscar" wrote:
>
> > “I can not ever remember setting an admin password.”
> >
> > Start here:
> >
> > Go to Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts
> > and see how the Administrator and Standard user accounts are set up.
> >
> > --
> > oscar
> >
> > ...Right click is your best friend...
> >
> >
> > "novice19" wrote:
> >
> > > I have a big problem, my Vista home premium, will not accept any of my
> > > passwords. i get an error message that says, "an unknown program is trying to
> > > access your computor, please enter admin password"
> > > Until last week, this did not happen, i used to get just a message, asking
> > > if i knew where this program was from, and have i used it before.
> > > I can not ever remember setting an admin password. I did though make back up
> > > dvd's when i bought tis pc two months ago, would there be anything on there
> > > to help? or any help from the more enlightened members of the forum would be
> > > appreciated. Thanks.
> > > PS i can not, do any restore or uninstall etc. because of the above.