Administration account

[Guest]

My daughter recently purchased a used laptop with XP Pro. It has a student
user but we cannot find an administrator to add software, etc. Any ideas on
how to start over?

 

[Meena]

See here:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Cavalry,

At the welcome screen do a Ctrl+alt+del twice.
This will bring up the "Log On to Windows" box.
Type in administrator as the User Name, leave the Password blank and
press enter.
Hopefully there was no password set.
Note: This hidden "Administrator" account is not intended for day to
day use and should not be used as such.
Go to Control Panel - User accounts and create a new administrator
account. Log off the hidden administrator account and log on to the
newly created administrator account. You will be able to install your
programs from there. The old account can always be deleted.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

My daughter recently purchased a used laptop with XP Pro. It has a student
user but we cannot find an administrator to add software, etc. Any ideas on
how to start over?

With second-hand computers, especially if acquired from strangers
but perhaps even if acquired from a family member, your wisest course
of action would probably be to format the hard drives and start fresh.
You don't want to get in trouble because the original owner may have
filled the hard drive with kiddie porn, or have problems because the
original owner downloaded/installed viruses or other malware.

Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)

HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;316941

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

--

Bruce Chambers

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