Corrupt administrator password
From: Robert (robert_of_sorbon_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 06/23/03
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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 01:43:05 -0700
I was able to restore Windows to the state it was in
the day before the crash. It was a long and tedious
process, but in the end victory was achieved and order
restored out of near-chaos. For the sake of digital
posterity I will now record the solution, in case someone
else has a similar problem.
In the following, Part 1, Part 2, etc. refers to MS
Knowledgebase article #307545, "How to recover from a
corrupted registry..." "RC" = Recovery Console.
First I did a clean install of WinXP in another
partition("E"). I then installed Recovery Console from
my WinXP disk to my hard drive, following the procedure
in MS Knowledgebase article #307654 (see also #314058).
I booted to Recovery Console from the clean install,
using the password created during installation.
In Part 1, I created the file "regcopy1.txt" by
copying the commands from the article and pasting in
Notepad. I then gained access to the C drive containing
the sick WinXP by following the procedure in
#310497, "How to add more power to Recovery Console..."
(see also #235364). Oddly, the cd command wouldn't shift
E:\ to C:\. Using Recovery Console I ran the batch file
in the C drive. At each step where I used RC I had to
log on to it in the E drive and run the "set
allowallpaths = true" command.
At the completion of Part 1 I was able to boot and
load WinXP and I completed Part 2 in Windows. After
completion of Part 2, WinXP loaded and displayed the
desktop of the limited account user who was active at the
time of the crash. The other limited accounts were
missing and an administrator account was missing. One
administrator account survived and it was possible to log
on with functionality and have Internet access but it
continued to be impossible to log on to RC in the C drive
despite trying all the passwords.
At this point I saw David's suggestion that I use
the Win98 disk but I was reluctant because of the
possibility that it could introduce new problems, and I
had what seemed to be an approximation of the state
before the crash.
I then completed Part 3, cutting and pasting to
create a batch file as before. After completing Part 3,
though, WinXP would not load and I was back to square one
with the "...following file is missing or corrupt:
\windows\system32\config" error message.
Before pursuing this, I decided to make password
reset disks for the clean install and then I logged on to
the administrator account in the sick WinXP and used the
Transfer Files and Settings Wizard to transfer to the
clean install, in case I lost what remained of the sick
WinXP. This turned out to be a bad idea because although
the clean install would then load the limited account
desktop with functionality, I lost the ability to log on
to the administrator account in both the clean install
and the sick WinXP. Needless to say, the password reset
disks would not work. My clean install was now unclean.
I repeated Part 2, and in troubleshooting Part 3 I
noticed that the batch file was only copying 4 files
instead of 5. It was failing to copy the "default"
file. I copied the file manually but it was still no
go. Then I noticed the little period in front of the "d"
in "default" -- it shows up in the directory listings and
the first line of Step 11 of the Part 2 instructions, but
nowhere else in the article. Windows won't allow
"_REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT" to be renamed ".DEFAULT" -- it
will only accept "DEFAULT". I changed the last line of
the batch file in Step 2 of Part 3 to read:
copy c:\windows\tmp\default c:\windows\system32
\config\.default
For want of a "." the kingdom was lost. I can't
think of anything that symbolizes the absurdity of
dealing with these machines better than this.
I ran the batch file, exited RC, selected the sick
WinXP to load and got a healthy log-on screen with all
the accounts. But when I tried to log on, I was
confronted with the ultimate insult: I had to reactivate
my copy of WinXP before I could log on and I had to do it
by phone because the wizard couldn't access the
Internet. Except for this last obstacle, WinXP was
recovered to the state it was in one day before the
crash, and Internet Explorer loaded and accessed the
Internet flawlessly.
>-----Original Message-----
> My hard disk was damaged by an application crash and I
>got the "windows\system32\config\SYSTEM missing or
>corrupted" error messagewhen trying to start Win XP.
> After running CHKDSK I regained access to all my
>partitions but got the same error message when trying to
>start Windows.
> I followed the procedure in Knowledgebase 307545(How
to
>Recover from a Corrupted Registry...) through Part Two
>successfully but I'm stymied at Part Three because
>Recovery Console won't let me in at that stage. It asks
>for the administrator password, which apparently is
>corrupted because it won't accept the one I had written
>down, nor will it accept it with "Caps Lock" on, nor
will
>it accept a blank entry.
> Is there a way to get past this to run the batch file
>in Part 3? I am using NTFS.
>.
>
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