Administrator question

[Steve T]

Related to above post of "won't boot again" but a separate question. I am
the Administrator on a PC. I am the only user listed in the User Accounts.
When I check on the Welcome screen it states that I am logged in as
Administrator and yet when I try to run Guided Help in Auto mode for a
"clean boot" I still get an error message that I do not have rights to
change items in the System Configuration Utility and the Guide cannot
continue. How many ways are there to logon as Administrator? When XP Home
was initially setup, there was no specific Administrator name or password
entered. I never had this problem before when I used msconfig to use
Selective Startup. I have always been able to install programs and change
parameters without this error message. What am I missing with this
Administrator title? Thank you, Steve T.

 

[Guest]

Depending on what youre specifically trying to do in windows,thier are
"administrators" & then thier is the "administrator" the s makes alot of
diffrence in windows OS..

 

[Malke]

Related to above post of "won't boot again" but a separate question. I am
the Administrator on a PC. I am the only user listed in the User Accounts.
When I check on the Welcome screen it states that I am logged in as
Administrator and yet when I try to run Guided Help in Auto mode for a
"clean boot" I still get an error message that I do not have rights to
change items in the System Configuration Utility and the Guide cannot
continue. How many ways are there to logon as Administrator? When XP Home
was initially setup, there was no specific Administrator name or password
entered. I never had this problem before when I used msconfig to use
Selective Startup. I have always been able to install programs and change
parameters without this error message. What am I missing with this
Administrator title? Thank you, Steve T.

Andrew E. is a troll and you can safely ignore anything he says. There
is no difference between the built-in Administrator account and other
user accounts with administrative privileges in XP.

Your issue has been seen many times when HP printer software is
installed. Since the changes made using the System Configuration Utility
(msconfig) occur even with the error message, I would just ignore the
message unless you don't want to use the HP printer any more.

If this isn't your issue and you don't have an HP printer, then
something else is going on. It could be caused by malware or by a
corrupted profile. There is no way for me to tell from your post. Do the
normal first and second steps of troubleshooting:

The First Question Of Troubleshooting: what changed between the time
things worked and the time they didn't?

The Second Question of Windows Troubleshooting: what is the
malware/virus status of the machine? If you think it is clean, what
programs (and versions) did you use to determine this?

Be sure the computer is clean:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware


Malke

 

[Nightowl]

When I check on the Welcome screen it states that I am logged in as
Administrator and yet when I try to run Guided Help in Auto mode for a
"clean boot" I still get an error message that I do not have rights to
change items in the System Configuration Utility and the Guide cannot
continue.

Further to what Malke said about HP printer software, McAfee is also
known to cause the msconfig error message.

 

[Steve T]

I had a problem with malware a while back where I kept getting a popup
across my desktop linking me to some Italian(?) site or something and went
through the whole process of Ad-Aware,Spybot,Super-Anti, and running MultiAV
as was suggested by Malke and others. Nothing was ever found until I
re-installed ZoneAlarm Pro and it prompted me when an .exe file was trying
to access the internet. That was the culprit and I deleted it without any
further problems. I think it has been about a month since that occurred. I
somehow finally got the Gateway to boot normally late last night after
running the Guided Help for a clean boot, even though I still kept getting
the error message that I did not have Admin rights. I have not attempted to
boot it up yet today. I do have an HP printer, a Deskjet 932C; that is
shared with 2 other PC's via Network Magic. I will boot the Gateway today
and run all of the above malware programs again and see what happens. Thank
you for reminding me. Steve T.

 

[Steve T]

Forgot to mention that the printer is about 6-7 years old. Have not had any
new printer software installed and the offending malware file that ZoneAlarm
Pro found last time was "isys32.exe". Steve T.

 

[Steve T]

I posted this same reply above under "won't boot again". Hope I don't mess
up any cross-posting rules.
No luck in the normal boot yet. I can Safe Boot but that's it. I have run
Ad-Aware, Spybot, SuperAnti and Multi_AV in Safe Mode with only one tracking
cookie found by AA. I just tried Safe Boot with Networking and when it
prompted for Windows(default), I chose MCE instead. I got an error message
that "system32\hal.dll is corrupt or missing" and MCE cannot start. How can
I repair/replace hal.dll? I have the same file on my other two PC's. Is it a
simple copy or do I need to download the file from somewhere? A link at Doug
Knox's website says it has software to repair hal.dll but that doesn't sound
right. Any ideas? Thanks, Steve T.

 

[Nightowl]

Steve, please see my reply under "Won't boot again".