I locked myself out of XP Pro

[Stevie]

I screwed up.

I'm fairly new at XP and I was messing around in the Computer
Management/Users section and saw a User with my name in the Name column and
also saw my name in the Full Name column of the Administrator line. In a
moment of sheer stupidity, I opened the Properties of what I thought was the
duplicate (the one with my name in the 1st column) and clicked Disabled.

After I logged out I can not log back on. I now seem to be disabled. My
name is on the list but with a flower as a picture instead of my jet plane.
Now it wants a password... I don't remember telling it a password
during installation or anytime since. I can get into my son and wife's
logon (they are Limited Accounts) but can't do anything from there. I can't
change any accounts or do a system restore. I can't do a repair with the CD
using a Limited Account.

I've been into safe mode where it gives one logon and it still wants a
password which I do not know.

Is there a work-around? I know having this Administrator account is
supposed to keep my kid from installing programs but what do you do if the
owner is locked out of the house? Am I going to have to do a full install
of XP? Is it even going to let me? If I could do a System Restore from a
Limited Account, it would probably be my magic bullet.

I am not looking forward to updating XP and installing all those programs
again. The one I never got aroung to installing was Norton's Ghost. Go
figger.

Thanks for any help.

Steve (also posted this to the MS public xp "general" forum)

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

System Restore would not help you, it will not reset your account to being
active. You should have a default administrator account, access it by
hitting ctrl+alt+delete twice at the logon screen, then type it in. If you
do not know the password, and just hitting <enter> doesn't work, then go
about half way down this page:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_passwords.htm. Once logged in as
administrator, you can reactivate your account.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Stevie]

Thanks Rick. I got it fixed by making a bootable CD at
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ which allowed me to reset the
Administrator password to *blank*.

Thanks for your quick reply.. it is appreciated. That looks like it would do
the trick, as well. I'm saving the link to kelly-korner for future
reference.

Steve