Re: Administrative Account :(:(

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J wrote:

Thank you for responding unfortunatley I believe I was using just the
admin acct...I went into control panel & user accts and there is no where
to add another user w/ admin settings or another user at all. I was trying
to do a screen shot but I lost my word & note pad wouldnt let me paste it.
I set a password to it (b/c it would just load to desktop) & rebooted it.
it came up Administrator requesting a password. Put in password & when i
go into control panel & user accts it says "Administrator w/ the chess
icon & under it is says "Guest Account" I am not even able to add another
acct. I tried to click on the your link for clean install b/c I cant even
get into bios to try a boot from disc but ie kept closing down on me. and
I am getting very stressed...it has been a long few days with this
computer luckily i have my laptop. The Dell is my kids computer. So I will
try again later to do a repair or clean install. Thank You for all your
help & if there is anything else you can think of please let me know. God
Bless!

Here are a few other things to try before you starting reinstalling Windows:

1. Boot into Last Known Good. You get to this option from the same menu as
Safe Mode.

2. If LKG doesn't work, then I think you can run a System Restore from a
Limited Account. If you can't, then I think you can find the rstrui.exe
file in c:\Windows\System32\restore\. Right-click on it and choose "run as
Administrator". If that works, restore to a date when things were working.

3. And here's another thought - From the Limited account, locate cmd.exe in
C:\Windows\System32. Right-click on it and choose "run as Administrator".
Now you'll be able to create another user account like so:

net user <username> <password> /add /active:yes [enter]
Substitute some name for "username" (ex. joe) and 1234 for the password.

Hopefully that will create an account with administrative privileges (or
someone else will come along and correct me) since that's the default in
XP. Then you can log onto that new account and do what you need to.

Since the machine belongs to your kid, it may also be extremely infected
with viruses/malware and that could be why the account got corrupted.
That's just a WAG on my part. If you think that's the case, then don't
bother yourself with all of this. Grab his data and flatten the system,
clean-install Windows. It's not the end of the world and sometimes the best
choice.

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

.

Relevant Pages

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