Re: user icons gone from welcome screen!

Well, Patrick, I tried a password cracker, and it reported that the admin
password was [blank], yet when I try recovery console and hit enter when
prompted for the admin password, Windows says the password is not valid.

What can I do now?

Thanks!

--Bill

"Patrick Keenan" <test@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23Nwm08DfIHA.5560@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Bill H." <wh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Oe4wSU$eIHA.6136@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Suddenly, this win xp home computer boots to the "welcome" screen, but
there
are no icons on which to click to logon. And there used to be two.

All they can do is click on the "shut down" icon in the lower left corner
of
the screen.

Safe mode does no better. Get no icons to click on.

Tried the C-A-D technique to get the alternate logon menu, and when we
try using the same display name as when it was working, (there are no
passwords on either of the two accounts), we get a message about "local
policy of this system does not permit you to log on interactively."

Now, what does THAT mean?

And no one can remember/find the Administrator password.

Can't get to command prompt as it wants you to log on first. :-(

Is there a way to boot with the Win install CD and then run system
restore?

Thanks.

Bill

By default, on XP Home the Administrator account is available only in Safe
Mode, and has no password (just press Enter). If a password has been
applied, or if the system has decided there is one, there are a number of
password reset/removal utilities available. Many are based on Linux. You
will of course need to download these and burn to CD from another system.

Since you're using XP Home, the potential for data loss when doing this
with EFS does not exist as it does with XP Pro.


If you use an inexpensive external USB2 drive case or drive connector,
it's very easy to back up the data from that XP Home system. Just pull
the drive, attach it to the drive case electronics, and plug that into a
USB2 port on another XP system that has enough space. You can then just
copy the data that you need.

Finally, part two of this KB article gives details on choosing a restore
point from Safe Mode. You can likely also adapt these directions for
use with a Linux boot CD, or by hosting the drive on another XP system,
usng the external USB2 drive case or connector, or the internal drive
connectors on the host PC.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545



HTH
-pk




.

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