How to bypass the administrator password on sign on screen?
I bought a computer with WinMe on it and I don't know what to do to bypass the screen that asks for a password? What to do?

Press the Esc key? Security on ME is not serious (unless its part of a domain, when it can be more so)

I have a computer that we bought for my daughter.  It has windows 98 or ME on it.  I tried to get rid of the vendors password screen by going into administrator from the control panel.  I assigned a new name and password so that access to anything else would be limited.  Then I tried to delete the vendor password sign on ability. (in that order).

The drive has documents and files I need, and now, I cannot get past the vendors sign on screen which comes up on intial boot up.  

Does anyone know how to get around this, or correct my goof where the files on the HD will not be wiped out?

I am only a hardware guy, and weak in the software side, so PLEASE, step by step if you can.

Are you wishing or are you doing?

dadmoonbunny

you should start a new thread for your new question. Also, are you in the right forum - ME? As I said, ME has no serious security (nor does it have an Administrator account) nor does 98. Pressing the escape key bypasses logon prompt (unless machine has been part of domain or had policies applied to it.

If it is 98 or ME and escape doesn't let you in, can you explain more fully what you did? As presumably you could log in - what do you mean by 'going into administrator in control panel'. And what functions did you use to set up new name/password & remove the vendor's?

If its XP - forum779: Microsoft: Windows XP Pro is where you should be.

You can easily retrieve files from the drive by connecting it as a slave to another machine.

My apologies for the posting to the wrong thread.  I thank you for patience and answering in any case.  I shall try setting it up as a slave.

Are you wishing or are you doing?

This is in reply to the original question and to "wolluf": The simplest way to delete an Me password is to boot up using your Windows Me boot-up floppy disk (if you have one, hopefully) and delete the *.PWL files in your Windows directory/folder. It is possible to tighten up Me security; I've done it using POLEDIT on the "default" user account after pressing "cancel" on the logon screen. It isn't as tight as Win NT or XP, but it can be tightened up from all but the most determined PC hackers (like me!) I used this set-up on my home network and kept everyone but me from even seeing what was on the disk drives! The drawback was that if you could only start up Windows Me in Safe Mode, you couldn't even go to device manager!

FifteenPlusSix - I'm aware of .pwl files and policy editor - BUT on a normal ME system the simplest way to bypass security is the escape key. You only need to take other measures if that doesn't work. Certainly simpler than booting from a floppy (which poster may not have) and using dos commands to delete .pwl files (which poster might not know how to do).

The original poster never came back, so presumably the problem was solved or they just lost interest.