Sorry but safe mode won't work either. You still need to authenticate even in safe mode. She can't authenticate without the password. There are basically only a few possible solutions. 1. Try to remember the password. 2. Use a third party product to change the password (ie. ERD commander). or 3. Perform a system restore and loose all of your data. That's about all you can do.Okay, didn't know that. Dont read all the posts. But why cant she boot in safe mode and go in admin?
Then she could change the password that way
Okay, didn't know that. Dont read all the posts. But why cant she boot in safe mode and go in admin?
Then she could change the password that way
One suggestion that I have tried and work well is that get 2nd hard drive, then set the old hard drive as slave, and have 2nd hard drive as master then install windows in there then there are good chance you may be able to retrieve some of files, but no guarantees. Today hard drives aren't as expensive as it was then!
Thats a good link. Problem is that I don't think she has a floppy. She could make a bootable CD with the application on it to run. Or if she can boot to USB then make a bootable thumbdrive with the application on it. The nice thing about your solution is that it looks like its free. The problem with it is that it cannot change XP Home & Prof: up to SP1. The Live Linux option is good as well as long as it has the drivers for her CD drive and that her CD drive is writable. Then she could at least copy her data off and then rebuild the system.Your idea for a second drive is a good one, but if he boots into win2k, he might not be able to access the data , NTFS permissions are funny that way. What he should do is boot from a live Linux CD, mount the hard drive, and then copy everything in the "documents and settings" folder to either a CD, another partition on the hard drive, a second hard drive or an external drive of some kind (flash drives are in gigs of capacity these days)
Then he should try to re-set the adminstrator password. there are ways to do this with Linux.
Recover Administrator's password
Thats the best howto I could find after searching for a few minutes, but there are more options if some one is willing to dig.
Galaxy what you need to do ....take your computer to the computer shop to have them mount the drive to another machine and copy the files across to a disk that way you wont lose the files.
Seth, nice article and that may work assuming she has the OEM version of the install CD and not a repair/recovery disk proviede by the computer manufacture. What boggles my mind is that she said she has ERD commander and that didn't work. I have never ever seen ERD not work unless the disk is corrupted. I would be interested in knowing exaxtly where and why ERD didn't work.WILL THIS WORK ? I Forgot My Administrator Password!
WILL THIS WORK ? I Forgot My Administrator Password!