PLEASE.....ANY HELP GREATLY APPRECIATED

[Guest]

Please, please, help....no idea how to fix this. Even if the answer is that
I'm SOL and have to re-install WinXP. Just hoping there's another way....

I wanted to get rid of that annoying login screen on my home computer (which
is running Win XP Pro) so it would go straight to desktop upon startup. I
went into Control Panel -> User Accounts -> advanced tab -> advanced user
management. In there, I right clicked each user and went to properties where
I checked the "Account is Disabled" box for each user. I THOUGHT that this
would eliminate the necessity for the login requirement. I also thought that
Windows would have some sort of safeguard built in to save us from ourselves.
It doesn't...now when I try to start up my computer, it brings up the login
screen and no matter what I try to login in as, even as Administrator, it
tells me that my account has been disabled
and to contact my administrator. Is there a way to back-door this to get in
and re-enable myself? I'm still able to get into Win2K (have both OSs
installed) but cannot re-enable thru it. Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

Try Booting into safemode and go through the default owner account.

 

[John John]

I think that you are out of luck with this. You have removed all the
Logon Locally permissions from the machine. Even if you have Network
logon Permissions I still don't know how you would go about reseting the
security permissions. I supposed you tried booting to "Last Known
Good Configuration"?

A long shot would be to try to restore the backup system, SAM and
security hives, a procedure explained here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

You could try the fix via a parallel installation or by slaving the
drive in another NT machine. Quite frankly I think it's grasping at
straws... A complete reinstall is probably the only way out of this.
You've locked the door and threw away the key!

John

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I tried going into Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration and tried
going through Win2K into DOS mode and tried to find something in there. I'll
try your suggestion of restoring the backup system, SAM etc. In DOS mode,
many of the directories would not open as such. For example, I went in and
was able to open the Windows directory but then when I tried to open the
Security directory or System directory, I'd get the message that it wasn't a
valid path. Any idea why?

 

[John John]

I'm not sure but without logon rights the security permissions are
probably destroyed or canceled for these files and the affected users.
You will have to try to fix this from a second working Windows installation.

John

 

[AZGLI]

There is a way to fix this. Let me find the files you need and I will
get right back to you.

There is a linux Password reset program that can re-enable the
Administrator account without needing to go through Windows.

In the future, you might want to use TweakUI or FreshUI as these
programs make those little tweaks a bit easier to do.

 

[AZGLI]

Try this:
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Click Bootdisk.

Download thte utility, install to floppy or CD, and follow the
directions on the website.

This should allow you to re-enable the account you need.

Hope this helps.

 

[John John]

I forgot about that one! Should work.

John

There is a way to fix this. Let me find the files you need and I will
get right back to you.

There is a linux Password reset program that can re-enable the
Administrator account without needing to go through Windows.

In the future, you might want to use TweakUI or FreshUI as these
programs make those little tweaks a bit easier to do.

 

[Guest]

Fantastic! I'll give this a try tonight. Thank you so much...you guys rock!