Re: No authorization to change files in Recovery Console

Good luck. If your System Restore was working properly and if you have a fairly recent restore point the repair, although a bit tedious, usually yields fairly good results. The exception to that might be when drive corruption is involved, and a chkdsk /r is necessary to fix the drive problem. Then the restore points/data may end up in File####.chk files and may be a bit harder to find or be in an unusable state because of missing bits.

John

Eric_the_Yellow wrote:

Thanks, I'll try this after work tonight and let you know.

"John John" wrote:


http://tinyurl.com/4m58

1- Select the Windows installation you want to log on to. You HAVE to enter a number from the list provided. For example:

Press 1 then press <Enter>

2- Now it will say to Type the Administrator password. If you don't know the password just press <Enter>. That is the default password on many installation. If however a password was given when Windows was installed or if the password was changed thereafter, obviously just pressing enter will not let you in and you will get the access denied error. Note also the warning in the Microsoft article about OEM installations.

If you really can't logon because the password is rejected you can try to reset the password with this: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ but being that your hives might be corrupt the utility may not work, give it a try and see.

If that fails it might be easier to put your Windows drive in another Windows 2000/XP computer and try the repairs from there. You can also do the same with your computer if you install a second (parallel) installation of Windows XP. If that is necessary it would be preferable that you install on a different partition or a different disk. You won't need to activate the installation, you only need it to fix the problem, once you're done you can delete the installation. And if you can't do that then you will have to resort to an in-place (repair) installation.

John

Eric_the_Yellow wrote:


Hello John John,

The exact error message is:
"Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

The Knowledge Base article is 307545. (How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting)

How do I log on with the admin user when I am using the 6 floppies to get to the Recovery Console? I can get to the Recovery Console, but when I try to enter any command, I get the following message: "Access is denied"

Thanks for your help and tips for getting help. -Eric

"John John" wrote:



You can't access the BIOS from the Recovery Console. To access the BIOS you have to press a key when the computer starts up, usually you will see a message telling you which key to press, something like "To enter setup press whatever key." or "Setup=whatever key". Common keys are F1, Esc or Del. That information is in your computer hardware documentation. The ONLY THING that you might want to do there is change the BOOT ORDER to the CD so that you can boot with the Windows XP CD instead of the cumbersome 6 floppy diskette.

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

You HAVE to log on with the Administrator password before you can do anything!

Tell us which Microsoft article you are trying to use, we might have an idea of your problem but we don't want to guess. If we don't know what exactly you are trying to do we can't help. When you get an error message post the EXACT error message here so we can offer relevant suggestions instead of guesses. Do you have a corrupt System or Software hive? Is that what you are trying to fix, where do you get the repair instructions from, which Microsoft document?

But, as I said earlier, you HAVE to confirm to us wether or not you can properly start the Recovery Console and access your Windows installation. If you can't get beyond that point any attempt at fixing the problem is futile unless you use a different repair method.

John

Eric_the_Yellow wrote:



I entered "md tmp" per the instructions for the fix, and got an error message. How do I request to log in as Administrator? When asked for a password I can leave it blank.

Are there instructions somewhere for how to access BIOS from the Recovery Console?

Sorry about the repeated posts - MS sent back messages that an error occurred.

-Eric

"John John" wrote:




Did you try just pressing <Enter>? The Administrator password is blank by default. As for the CD not booting did you go in the BIOS and change the boot order to boot to CD first?

John

Eric_the_Yellow wrote:




I've got what I've discovered is a common problem: Windows cannot start because the following file is corrupt... I have opened the XP Recovery Console using 6 Boot Floppies, since my computer would not boot off of the XP CD. Once in the repair window, I can't do anything because I don't have the authorization. However, I have never set up any accounts on my XP computer, nor have I set a password for the administrator user. Is there a command I can use to switch to the admin user? Any other suggestions as to how to work around this? Thanks in advance for your help. I'm glad there is help available on this forum. -MV




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