user icons gone from welcome screen!

[Bill H.]

Suddenly, this win xp home computer boots to the "welcome" screen, but there
are no icons on which to click to logon. And there used to be two.

All they can do is click on the "shut down" icon in the lower left corner of
the screen.

Safe mode does no better. Get no icons to click on.

Tried the C-A-D technique to get the alternate logon menu, and when we try
using the same display name as when it was working, (there are no passwords
on either of the two accounts), we get a message about "local policy of this
system does not permit you to log on interactively."

Now, what does THAT mean?

And no one can remember/find the Administrator password.

Can't get to command prompt as it wants you to log on first. :-(

Is there a way to boot with the Win install CD and then run system restore?

Thanks.

Bill

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Suddenly, this win xp home computer boots to the "welcome" screen, but
there
are no icons on which to click to logon. And there used to be two.

All they can do is click on the "shut down" icon in the lower left corner
of
the screen.

Safe mode does no better. Get no icons to click on.

Tried the C-A-D technique to get the alternate logon menu, and when we try
using the same display name as when it was working, (there are no
passwords on either of the two accounts), we get a message about "local
policy of this system does not permit you to log on interactively."

Now, what does THAT mean?

And no one can remember/find the Administrator password.

Can't get to command prompt as it wants you to log on first. :-(

Is there a way to boot with the Win install CD and then run system
restore?

Thanks.

Bill

By default, on XP Home the Administrator account is available only in Safe
Mode, and has no password (just press Enter). If a password has been
applied, or if the system has decided there is one, there are a number of
password reset/removal utilities available. Many are based on Linux.
You will of course need to download these and burn to CD from another
system.

Since you're using XP Home, the potential for data loss when doing this with
EFS does not exist as it does with XP Pro.


If you use an inexpensive external USB2 drive case or drive connector, it's
very easy to back up the data from that XP Home system. Just pull the
drive, attach it to the drive case electronics, and plug that into a USB2
port on another XP system that has enough space. You can then just copy
the data that you need.

Finally, part two of this KB article gives details on choosing a restore
point from Safe Mode. You can likely also adapt these directions for use
with a Linux boot CD, or by hosting the drive on another XP system, usng the
external USB2 drive case or connector, or the internal drive connectors on
the host PC.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545



HTH
-pk

 

[Bill H.]

Well, some questions.

If I connect the winxp home disk to another computer, say winxp pro, can I
access the home disk without any user ids and/or passwords for the home
system?

And, will I be able to see all folders, including the docs and settings and
subfolders for the existing users? Or will security prevent that?

I don't know what EFS means.

Here's more info.

Recap: no user ids appear when booting normally or when booting in safe
mode.

In either boot method, using the C-A-D gets a logon screen. If we log in
with a known user/password, including Administrator when in safe mode, there
is a msg about "Local policy of this system does not permit you to log on
interactively."

If we use a bogus user/password, we get the expected "the system cannot log
you in."

I guess what I'm thinking best is to copy off the data under each users "My
documents" folders, and then do a system restore to factory.

Otherwise, how does one log onto the system when the system does not allow
the logons?

Thanks!

--Bill

 

[Bill H.]

Well, Patrick, I tried a password cracker, and it reported that the admin
password was [blank], yet when I try recovery console and hit enter when
prompted for the admin password, Windows says the password is not valid.

What can I do now?

Thanks!

--Bill