[icarus0]

Hi

My brother installed a number of critical updates for Windows XP Professional earlier including, he thinks, Service Pack 2. After restarting Windows, it now asks him for a login password which it never has done before.

He's now a bit stuck as has never set a password for either his account or the admin. A utility to remember passwords states that it is unable to retrieve the password as there isn't one.
Attempts to login in safe mode using 'admin', 'administrator', default and leaving it blank are also unsuccessful.

Could anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks in advance.

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during your boot up, press f2 or f10 or what ever works for your computer to get into your bios, somewhere in the settings it should say use administrative passwords or something, make sure there is nothing in those blocks

if this does not work, try another computer with windows xp and make a password reset disk (just type it in the box in the Help and Support Icon in ur start menu) and see if that works

[Hemal]

during your boot up, press f2 or f10 or what ever works for your computer to get into your bios, somewhere in the settings it should say use administrative passwords or something, make sure there is nothing in those blocks

if this does not work, try another computer with windows xp and make a password reset disk (just type it in the box in the Help and Support Icon in ur start menu) and see if that works

[icarus0]

Thanks for the reply.

No luck with either though .

[suckaf00]

This was a few days ago, but if you are still locked out of your machine, you can do this to get back in; You will need to make a disk on another machine. You can download Nt/2000 admin (I believe it works on xp as well) from the "tools" section at http://dvnt.freeshell.org which contains the disk image and a readme file I wrote on creating and using the disk. What this creates is a linux boot disk, but with prompts that allow you to change or delete the passwords for admin or any account on your machine. I advise deleting the password since changing it doesnt always work. hope this helps!

[:Linux:]

hi there,

that one watch battery on the motherboard that supplies the power for all the passwords before the trans. switch, cant you pull it for like 10 seconds while computers off, reboot and in BIOS just fix your options back before startup and continue to boot?


thats a quick summary, i dont know the exact details because i ahve never had to go that far to reset a password, but im sure sox knows what im talking about
-matt

[icarus0]

Thanks for the replies.

Have now solved the problem by installing a slightly more recent version of XP over the previous version. Seems to have done the trick.

[suckaf00]

linux is talking about the cmos battery which will erase the system passwords, but also some of the basic system info as well. its nothing that cant be set again, so no big deal, but it does require opening the case. Sometimes opening the case is not an option for whatever reason, and I recommend against touching your internals as much as possible. you can easily get your machine back with the disk I described above.

[:Linux:]

yes your exactly right, static electricity to the motherboard, hard drives, vcard or any internal parts is worse than pooring water on your computer.. definately something you want to resist from doing if at all possible

and yes, your option is alot easier and makes alot more sense, but for older OS users like 98 its a bit harder to reset passwords.

-matt

[DHooper]

hi there,

that one watch battery on the motherboard that supplies the power for all the passwords before the trans. switch, cant you pull it for like 10 seconds while computers off, reboot and in BIOS just fix your options back before startup and continue to boot?


thats a quick summary, i dont know the exact details because i ahve never had to go that far to reset a password, but im sure sox knows what im talking about
-matt

By pulling the CMOS battery it will only reset the BIOS password not Windows. Windows passwords are save to the harddrive and can only be recoved using other methods. Hope that this clears up any problems.

Edited by DHooper, 11 March 2005 - 12:38 PM.

[:Linux:]

nah its ok, i figured it reset everything, my bad =(

the problem was already solved before i posted, i was just wondering if that was an option. i thought you could reset all the passwords to scratch removing the cmos battery

again, sorry

-matt

[macten]

Suckaf00....I download that program and opened it with Winzip. The instructions say to copy rawrite.exe to the c drive however you can't copy something that has been unzipped with Winzip. when you right click, the 'copy' option is not there. What am I missing here?

[bdlt]

try extract

[suckaf00]

DHooper, good point about the cmos battery, I should have pointed that out! Macten, bdlt is right, go ahead and extract the contents of the zip first. The disk works like a charm, let me know if you have any more Q's

[macten]

suckaf00...thanks, like you say it works like a charm. I wasn't locked out, I just needed it for the tool box. Thanks again....