Windows upgrade--desperately need help!

Factual Questions
1

I just upgraded to Windows XP, and I can’t get into the Administrator account. What gives?

I bought this work computer about a year ago, and originally intended it for my executive director. Shortly afterward, however, I moved it instead to my desk, formatted the hard drive, and installed Windows 2000 instead of the default Windows XP Home.

Because of a quirk of the harddrive partitioning (I think), it made the machine a dual-boot machine, and whenever I rebooted, I could choose to log into XP Home or 2000. I always chose the latter. I set up an administrator login with a password.

Last week I bought XP Pro for all the computers in our organization, and installed it on my computer first, doing a straight upgrade instead of a wipe-and-install. It all seemed to be going well until it came time to log into XP Pro for the first time: when I try to log in, my only two choices are as “guest” or as “[executive director’s name]”. And neither she nor I have any idea at all what her password is. The Administrator account I set up under Windows 2000 is completely gone. As a guest, of course, I am unable to change any account settings.

Gah! What can I do? Will reinstalling windows 2000 give me my old account back, and if so, can I use that to change the settings such that “Administrator” will be the default login when I reupgrade to XP Pro? Is there a simpler solution? Or have I forever lost all my files under the “administrator” account?

Daniel

2
      • You might have someone experienced with them try booting with a live Linux distro (a Linux version that boots off a CD and allows browsing all the files on the machine) and seeing what’s still left. Or alternately read up on it yourself, Knoppix is one “big” name in live distros. http://www.knoppix.net/
  • There are tools for resetting Windows system passwords but I don’t know right off where they can be found online or how destructive they are. Google turns up a lot of hits, many involve booting off a live Linux CD that contains a tool on it for doing the reset. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=windows+xp+password+reset+tool&btnG=Search
    ~
3

When you are at the Welcome Screen, try the following:

press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice at the Welcome Screen and input your Administrator password in the classic logon window that appears. Many times the Administrator account has never had a password defined.

4

What DougC said. Basically if you want to get into the machine find a linux live CD that has a password reset function and discover just how effective Windows security is … This will get you onto the computer and your files.

I’m confused, however, as to what you’ve done. How did you do the upgrade, bang in the windows XP Pro CD and boot from it ? Boot to XP and run the CD ? Boot to 2000 and run the CD ? If you upgraded 2000 to XP (is that even possible ?) then it should have kept all the settings or warned you if it was going to nuke them. What I’m saying is that it’s possibile your 2000 install (and it’s files) is still around but not on the boot menu.

If that’s the case you should still have a 2000 partition and should be able to change the new boot manager to use that too. Of course that means you haven’t upgraded 2000 at all.

I could have misunderstood your description.

SD

5

Well, I’m making progress. Based on another thread, I’ve discovered that windows XP Pro makes things easier for me (grrrrr!) by hiding the administrator account at login except when booting into safe mode. I booted into safe mode and set up another account with administrative privileges, so at least I can change registry entries, etc. I also changed an entry, based on an article I read yesterday at Microsoft’s website, that I thought would set up the administrator login to appear by default when the machine was turned on; however it didn’t work. I’ll poke around a little more and see what I can find out.

Daniel

6

Aaaand it’s solved. Once you log in under an administrative account, you can go to user settings and choose something like “Change the way users log into this machine.” Uncheck the option that says, “Use the cutesy little obnoxious icon login that hides your Administrator account and pisses you off,” and next time you log in, you’ll get the normal fields in which to type user account name and password.

Sorry about panicking on y’all–the problem occurred yesterday afternoon, and I’ve worried about it all night.

Daniel

7

You can create a password reset floppy disk.
Open User Accounts in Control Panel.
Click your account name.
Under Related Tasks located on the left side of the window, click Prevent a forgotten password.
In the Forgotten Password Wizard, follow the instructions as they appear on the screen.
Good to have as a backup in case you forget the password or someone else changes it. :slight_smile:

8

True, and I was looking at that option–but you have to be logged into the appropriate account to create the disk, and I couldn’t figure out how to get into the account when I wrote the OP. Perhaps I should do that for the future, though, in case I manage to forget this password.

Thanks to all for the advice!

Daniel