Re: XP's Recovery Console Won't Work Because of Invisible Administrator
- From: Bruce Chambers <bchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:46:15 -0600
Razor wrote:
G'day everyone! I'm Razor, and I'm new here, so bear with me as I
describe a rather fickle, circumstantial problem.
Okay, here's the situation:
I recently got a new Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard with an AMD 4000+
dual-core processor (Socket AM2) for my computer that was running
Service Pack 2. After self-installing it and plugging all the wires in,
I started up the computer with no peripherals or other non-essential
drives. The computer started usually, albeit a new picture due to the
different BIOS, but then this is where it goes wrong. The computer will
get to the point where the Windows XP Home Edition logo comes up with
that little loading bar with the little thing that moves across it, but
then it is suddenly replaced by a blue screen of death that immediately
flashes away in less than a second. Then the computer restarts and the
process starts all over again.
After this happened a few times, I downloaded the BIOS from the
internet while on another computer and put it on a floppy and updated
my broken computer. This did nothing and changed nothing.
Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed OEM installations are BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore are *not* transferable to a new motherboard - check yours before starting), unless the new motherboard is virtually identical (same chipset, same IDE controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on which the WinXP installation was originally performed, you'll need to perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at the very least:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341
Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with WinXP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html
The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point. You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it, is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it "tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable than the Win9x group.
So next, I did some work and I was able to find out that the error
number on that quickly-disappearing blue error screen was "0x0000007E"
among a few others as well. After doing some research, I decided to run
a repair on my computer via my Windows Installation disk. After starting
it up and all, I get to the point where it asks for my Administrator
Password. (Why does it even ask for this anyway? I'm only repairing
it.)
And incorrectly, at that. See instructions above. It asks for the Administrator password to ensure that you're authorized to perform the necessary system-wide actions.
Well, I type in my usual password. Well, it said it wasn't valid
and it told me to type it in again. After failing two more times, it
made me restart the computer. I brought back up the repair console, but
it was the same story again and again.
The password being requested is that of the built-in _Administrator_ account, not the password for any other administrative user accounts that the computer's owner may have created. Unless the owner deliberately set the Administrator's password via the Management Console (_not_ the Control Panel), it's probably still blank. WinXP Pro asks the installer to set the Administrator's password during installation, but WinXP Home doesn't.
Failing that, Linux-based password cracking utilities abound on the Internet, freely available to anyone who can use Google.
So, after some more research (I'm doing a lot of this research, huh?
XD), ....
Too bad you didn't do the research _before_ starting this boondoggle; you'd have saved yourself a *lot* of time and trouble.
.... I found out that there is an invisible administrator account
pre-programmed into every computer. Now, I hear that initially that the
Invisible Admin's password is blank, but the thing is, when you're
entering the password to access the repair console, pressing "enter"
with nothing there makes it cancel it's password request and it also
cancels the repair console. So by entering no password, the RC cancels
it.
That doesn't matter, as one doesn't use the Recovery Console to make the sort of "global" repairs required after a motherboard change. See instructions above.
--
Bruce Chambers
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