XP home edition - created new acct. can't get back to administrator

[Joe]

A friend has a 3-4 year old Dell with the XP Home Edition OS. She recently
decided to set up a new account for any visitors to her house. After setting
up "Visitor"- she couldn't get back to being Administrator. She'll log off
to Visitor- then up comes the Welcom Screen dialog box to enter another
account name and password- that box was always coming up before she set up
Visitor- as she wanted a password to access her computer. But this time when
it came up it no longer had in the User ID field- which was always in there
before. She remembers her password but not the name of the User ID. She
thinks she knows it- but keeps trying it and variations with no luck.

So, I checked in my "Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out" resource book. On pg.
118 in a topic called "Logging On as Administrator" it points out that with
XP Pro, it's OK and possible to log on as the Administrator from the Welcome
screen, but it's not possible to do so with the Home Edition- for which you
must go into Safe Mode. So, we did that - got into Safe Mode- but didn't
know what to do from there- the book doesn't say.

Any help would be appreciated. By the way, why should MS make this
distinction? If that really is the only way to log on to Admin. from within
Home Edition, it sure is cumbersome- there must be a better way.

 

[Richard in AZ]

A friend has a 3-4 year old Dell with the XP Home Edition OS. She recently decided to set up a new
account for any visitors to her house. After setting up "Visitor"- she couldn't get back to being
Administrator. She'll log off to Visitor- then up comes the Welcom Screen dialog box to enter
another account name and password- that box was always coming up before she set up Visitor- as she
wanted a password to access her computer. But this time when it came up it no longer had in the
User ID field- which was always in there before. She remembers her password but not the name of the
User ID. She thinks she knows it- but keeps trying it and variations with no luck.

So, I checked in my "Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out" resource book. On pg. 118 in a topic called
"Logging On as Administrator" it points out that with XP Pro, it's OK and possible to log on as
the Administrator from the Welcome screen, but it's not possible to do so with the Home Edition-
for which you must go into Safe Mode. So, we did that - got into Safe Mode- but didn't know what
to do from there- the book doesn't say.

Any help would be appreciated. By the way, why should MS make this distinction? If that really is
the only way to log on to Admin. from within Home Edition, it sure is cumbersome- there must be a
better way.

Sorry, but the only way to get to the Administrator account in the Home Edition is to startup in the
safe mode.
Then you will given a logon screen with Administrator as one of the choices. From administrator, go
to users in the control panel and delete the visitor account. It should also show her original user
account by name.