Re: Locked out of xp home

George wrote:

I was trying to clean up logins on my home pc and ended up locking myself
out. I will try to explain everything I did below; hopefully enough info
for someone to help me...

First I had gone to run: "Control Password2" and found that there were
some
extra accounts there that I had not seen in the Control Panel of XP. I
deleted one of those that I hadn't seen before. It had my name spelled
wrong. I remembered seeing my name spelled correctly too, and also
ADMINISTRATORS with an s at the end. So there seemed to be other accounts
available.

Then I saw some screen saying to restart my computer in order to delete
the account I had deleted earlier.

As soon as I restarted, that same annoying misspelled login that I tried
to
delete popped up again, and it insisted on a password. We have never used
passwords for any logins in my house!!!

When I tried "Administrator," it said I could not log on because of an
"account restriction."

I am stuck because we have never used any passwords ever. Any help to get
me back in would be appreciated. I would be most thankful, especially on
this Thanksgiving day...

Standard answer, take the bits that are applicable to you:

If you have forgotten your password, if you have another user account with
administrative privileges you can log into that account and change your
original user account's password from the User Accounts applet in Control
Panel. If you don't have another account like this set up or don't have the
password to it, you'll need to log into the built-in Administrator account.
In XP Home, boot the computer into Safe Mode. Do this by repeatedly tapping
the F8 key as the computer is starting up. This will get you to the right
menu. Navigate using your Up arrow key; the mouse will not work here. Once
in Safe Mode, you will see the normally hidden Administrator account. The
default password is a blank.

In XP Pro, you do not need to go into Safe Mode. At the Welcome Screen, do
Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to get the classic Windows logon box. Type in
"Administrator" and whatever password you assigned when you set up Windows.

If you reset the built-in Administrator account's password in Home or have
Pro and don't remember the password, use NTpasswd to change the built-in
Administrator account's password to a blank. Download the bootable CD .iso,
burn with third-party burning software (as an image, not as data), boot
with the media you created. You may need to change the boot order in the
BIOS or get a temporary boot order menu with a special keypress. NTpasswd
will run. Follow the instructions carefully.

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

Then go to the User Accounts applet in Control Panel and set passwords that
you will remember and make other desired changes.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

.

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