PLEASE HELP - I have a paper due and comp. is broken!!

[Josh]

I used Tweak-XP to enable auto-logon so that when I turn
on my computer it automatically logs on without requesting
password. I put in the wrong user name so when my system
turned on a user was created under that name but with no
rights. I can't boot into safe moder now or do much of
anything. Help me boot in safe-mode or alter my logon
process.

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

If you click

start/logoff

Do you get an option to switch user ?

What problem are you having trying to boot into safe mode ?

Paul

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Hey Josh,

I just tried something that seems to work

start/run
control userpasswords2

This will prompt you for a username and password of a user with admin
rights.

Once you get in, change the tick box to users have to supply a password,
then highlight the user you want to logon automatically, untick the box and
click apply. It will then ask for the password of the user you specified

Good Luck with your paper.

Paul

 

[Fred]

-----Original Message-----
If you click

start/logoff

Do you get an option to switch user ?

What problem are you having trying to boot into safe mode ?

Paul





.
I had a similar problem. When booting up, press the F8

button. Try the 'debugging mode'. This helped me.

 

[Josh]

Well, I got it to boot into safe mode. Still the same
problem though. It boots right into this bad user and I
can't switch users. In the list of users this is the only
one in it now and I can't manipulate the users list at all
(i.e. add a new user). Safe mode did nothing, last good
config did nothing, and none of my admin accounts or
passwords are recognized in that "control userpasswords2"
because this is the only user in existence now.

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Is there only one username displayed in the list of accounts in control
userpasswords2 ?

Not even the "Administrator" username itself ? This should be there, its
built in.

Navigate in My Computer into the top directory of the windows xp partition
and then into the Documents and Settings folder.

Is the folder belonging to your original user still there?.

Is there a folder called administrator ? If there is not, there should still
be an administrator username on your system, which got added at installation
time. The folder may not be there because no one has logged on using the
Administrator username/password. The administrator username may not have had
a password set.

Try and see if you can use the runas command to run stuff as administrator.

Go to a command prompt and try

runas /user:Administrator "control userpasswords"

You need the double quotes.
If you are lucky, it won't prompt you for a password. If so, you're in !
You could actually log on as administrator, give a blank password.

If it does prompt for an administrator password, this a bit of a hurdle to
cross, but not insurmountable.

Did you install this system yourself, or did it come preinstalled? Do you
remember setting an administrator password at installation time, or if it
came preinstalled, do you have the manufacturers documentation ?

If you've absolutely lost the administrator password, there are a couple of
options.

1. A repair install wont fix this, you are supposed to do a clean install.
In order to do this you should have a spare partition, it doesn't have to be
empty, just have around 2GB of free space. Install windows xp into the spare
partition.


2. On the other hand, if you dont have a spare partiton, you could do whats
called a parallel install, where you install windows xp into the existing xp
partition, but into a different directory.

There is step by step instructions here.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/installxpcdparallell/index.htm

3. You could try and reset the Administrator password by editing the
registry offline.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

I haven't personally tried this, but I did come across some tools on this
website which I'm going to have play with.

If speed is of the essence, and you have the windows xp cd, then I'd go
with option 1 or 2.

You can tidy things up later, once you've got your paper in.

Paul