Administrator restricted - Control Panel Missing

[Guest]

I have a Windows XP pro with SP2 and all current patches. There are 3 user
accounts, ME, MyWife, MyDaughter. MyWife and MyDaughter have limited
accounts. I just tried to login as ME to change MyWifes acccount back to
type of administrator. However, the control panel was missing. I tried My
Computer, Properties and received the message to effect, "You do not have
priveledges to access... please contact the administrator...".

I did a Safe Mode boot and logged in as Administrator, and found only three
user accounts... Administrator, ME and Guest. I checked ME and found type of
Administrator and Guest deactivated. Where did the other two accounts go?
Why am I (ME) of type administrator and cannot get access to the control
panel or My Computer, Properties?

How can I repair this situation? How did this happen?

Thanks for you assistance...

..... Mr Mike

 

[Guest]

Sounds like you removed yourself from the admin group.
Try
Start
Run
Control.exe

If anything go back to safemode add yourself back in as admin them reboot.

 

[Guest]

If you read my complete message you would know that I already rebooted in
Safe Mode, as the Administrator and found myself set up as an
administrator.... and wonder why I only saw some of the user accounts.

If I try Start, Run, Control.exe, i get the following message:

"This operations has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on the
computer. Please contact your system administrator."

+++

 

[Steven L Umbach]

If you did not specifically set up Group Policy to restrict access to
Control Panel or use a third party program do so the same your problem is
most likely malware related. Many of the spyware or internet protection
programs give you the option to protect your computer which may lock out
even administrators until the protection is disabled. Again if you can not
ever remember doing such malware would be my guess particularly if you have
no explanation for missing user accounts and should take steps to try and
scan for an remove malware and spyware with the understanding that the final
solution may be to reinstall the operating system after first backing up any
important files and decrypting any files encrypted via EFS. The link below
can help on how to secure your computer and deal with malware and spyware.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxpsp2/Default.mspx
-- Protect Your PC

You could try entering usrmgr.msc in the run box to see if that allows you
to manage users or try the command line such as net user and net localgroup.
The command net users will display user accounts and net user username will
display information about user accounts. You can use net help command to
find more information on using the net command. Local Group Policy can be
accessed by entering gpedit.msc in the run box while logged on as an
administrator. If you can open it you can navigate to user
configuration/administrative templates where there are many categories where
you can enable/disable settings. In your case I would take a look at the
settings under system/control panel and Windows components/Microsoft
Management Console and disable or enable as the case may be after reading
the explanation of the setting to try and remove the restriction affecting
you. On a non domain computer local Group Policy will affect all user
accounts.The specific error message you get indicates a Group Policy
restriction that normally will be applied via gpedit.msc but can also be
done via direct registry editing. --- Steve