concernedmom said:
my son uses this computer more often than I do, he put pass words on
everything and I can't see what he's up to. I can't get into his account
and
I can't change anything, how can I delete his password? I want to make
sure
he's safe and I would like to put a parental control on it.
Using an administrator-level account, you can clear and change the
passwords. However, you can be guaranteed that he's going to notice,
probably won't like it, and that's going to raise an entirely different set
of issues. Perhaps try to get the problem solved in a more open way, and
get him to log in and remove the passwords.
If the Administrator account has had passwords put on it, and they are not
available you can also remove those, or have a decent tech do so, using a
Linux boot CD with password removers. These are pretty common and take
only a few minutes. You will then put a strong password of your own on
that account, and change it regularly. Again, this *will be noticed*.
Note that if this is XP Pro, clearing or changing passwords from outside
the account will render EFS-encrypted files permanently inaccessible. This
does not apply to XP Home, as EFS isn't available in Home.
Finally, accounts should have strong passwords. All of the parental control
software packages rely on strong passwords, which should be checked and
changed regularly. These tools can be very good, but are of no real value
if you lose control of the passwords.
HTH
-pk
