I'm NOT part of a Domain......(sorry for the multi-post)

[DS]

I apologize in advance for this multi-post. I found this group after I
posted a question to m.p.win200.networking but it's more relevant here
since it's XP.

I have an oddball problem. One of the people that I provide support for
had a problem with their XP pro.

Somehow or another, the 'system' file for the registry became corrupted.
It may have been caused by a power outage ? But anyway, upon bootup it
would give the error that '...\system was missing or corrupt'.

I ruled out a memory issue as it failed with the same file each time. In
my experience, if it was a problem with RAM, it would be a different file
each time. So following M$ suggestion's, I did a repair booting from the
XP cd.

After the repair the PC now boot's and comes to a login screen. It
think's that it's part of a domain now, but it's not, it was in a
workgroup. Logon is not possible because it can't contact a domain
controller. There is no option available to logon on to 'This Computer'.

The only user available is the Administrator account and the local
account appears to have a blank password, but then it tries to
authenticate with a domain controller.

One of the password changer's pointed it out as blank. Using ERD2003 I
searched thru the registry and found the ComputerName to now be
'MACHINENAME' and trying to logon with MACHINENAME/Administrator with a
blank password gave me a different error, still not allowing me to logon,
but saying 'Check to be sure the username and domain are correct....'

Doesn't work in safe mode w/o network either.

Does anyone have any ideas ?

Thanks in advance,

DS

 

[Chris Holden]

I apologize in advance for this multi-post. I found this group after I
posted a question to m.p.win200.networking but it's more relevant here
since it's XP.

I have an oddball problem. One of the people that I provide support for
had a problem with their XP pro.

Somehow or another, the 'system' file for the registry became corrupted.
It may have been caused by a power outage ? But anyway, upon bootup it
would give the error that '...\system was missing or corrupt'.

I ruled out a memory issue as it failed with the same file each time. In
my experience, if it was a problem with RAM, it would be a different file
each time. So following M$ suggestion's, I did a repair booting from the
XP cd.

After the repair the PC now boot's and comes to a login screen. It
think's that it's part of a domain now, but it's not, it was in a
workgroup. Logon is not possible because it can't contact a domain
controller. There is no option available to logon on to 'This Computer'.

The only user available is the Administrator account and the local
account appears to have a blank password, but then it tries to
authenticate with a domain controller.

One of the password changer's pointed it out as blank. Using ERD2003 I
searched thru the registry and found the ComputerName to now be
'MACHINENAME' and trying to logon with MACHINENAME/Administrator with a
blank password gave me a different error, still not allowing me to logon,
but saying 'Check to be sure the username and domain are correct....'

Doesn't work in safe mode w/o network either.

Does anyone have any ideas ?

Thanks in advance,

DS

Clean install. However, if you need the data, you'll have to be naughty and
Partition Magic your drive, then install XP to the new partition. Copy the
data. Delete XP from the first partition. If needed, reinstall XP to first
partition, copy data back to first partition. Delete the second partition
and expand it using PM. Technically against the EULA, but I suspect you'd
get away with it as you are only rescuing data. You could also try
http://www.knoppix.org/ as a CD runnable Linux distro that can be used to
get your data and copy it to a different partition/drive. Then you can clean
install XP.
Chris