locked out of windows 2000 professional

[JSPM]

I cannot get into my win2000 professional computer after
making a what I believe to be a minor change in the
network settings. I changed the networking from a domain
to a workgroup to access another network. When control
panel asked me to restart for the settings to take effect
and when I restarted, it wouldn't accept any possible
logon name and I do not know the administrator password
since I changed it. Is there any way to get into windows
without logging in to change the settings back. I have
important files on the computer and cannot lose them. Can
anyone please help me???

 

[Joe Smith]

reinstall windows 2K ... your files are safe if you do not reformat your
disk. Use the UPGRADE mode, if available - since win2K by default stores
your workfiles in documents & settings, you should not loose anything
important.

make sure you use a good password for the ADMINSTRATOR that you WILL NOT
forget this time ... okay? I'd suggest (as someone did for someone else)
tatoo the password somewhere --- ;-)

Another thought is to use passwords you might not remember but always have
reference to ... for instance: drivers license number, membership card
number or other document you keep in your wallet you will not easily loose.
MY DL is 15 digits long - great password - NY is 21 digits if I remember
correctly ... heheheheh.

good luck

 

[Joe Smith]

Oh, one other note ... after re-installing win2K (new install if you updated
the system with service packs), you will have to re-install all the software
you were using ... unfortunatly the registry is replaced with a new one and
regardless of what software was on the machine prior, the registry entries
and configurations are not copied. you can copy the data files from your
old logon name in documents & settings to your new profile ... then you can
either delete the old ones (to avoid confusion) or let them stay there - the
choice is yours.

good luck

 

[Guest]

Invaluable tool for getting into locked out systems is
ERD Commander "Emergency Repair Disk". You boot from cd,
and get inside the OS...you can then modify passwords,
change passwords, work on TCP/IP etc etc etc

 

[NinjaGranny]

I cannot get into my win2000 professional computer after
making a what I believe to be a minor change in the
network settings. I changed the networking from a domain
to a workgroup to access another network. When control
panel asked me to restart for the settings to take effect
and when I restarted, it wouldn't accept any possible
logon name and I do not know the administrator password
since I changed it. Is there any way to get into windows
without logging in to change the settings back. I have
important files on the computer and cannot lose them. Can
anyone please help me???

Hundreds of ways to do this

Make a linux boot disk and load an ntfs manger ( if volume is ntfs) and
save your files to another partition ( fat32 or nfs2).

Or use one of the many linux boot disks that blank the administrator
password on all windows systems from NT onwards.

Heres a link to one of the easy to use versions -
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

its a little flakey if you are on high encryption ( most people aren't)
but just google for it if you need to . I use them all the time - best
to just blank the admin password rather than set it to something -
setting it to something seems to cause sam problems on occasions . Never
had a problem just blanking it.