Administrator locked out of system utilities

[technobia]

I have a Windows XP SP2 workstation that the previous administrator (a real paranoid control freak) disabled a bunch of system utilities IN THE ADMINISTRATOR account such as cmd.exe the task manager and other admin utilities.

This system has some MISSON critical applications on it but I can not document them for disaster recovery without wiping the machine out and starting over. Which of course, would break functions of the machine! I have combed over the security policies and nothing jumps out at me to see what he might have done. Someone suggested a tool from the Windows XP Pro Resource Kit but I can not find any documentation about that and I do not want to purchase it only to find that is not the solution.

Does any body had any idea how hack in with FULL administrator privileges without killing the machine and it’s applications or at a minimum how to turn on access to the utilities? This person was asked to reverse it and he actually admitted that he has locked himself out. If you can believe that???? He says he has “it” mirrored whatever that means. I do not see a traditional mirror so one can only guess what kind of redundancy, if any there really is. We really have no leverage with this guy so I am at the mercy of you all!

Thanks
Jody

 

[wolluf]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222

might be worth a try - except you will need access to a command prompt to run it.

Can you create a new administrator level account? If you can, depending on what's been done, it may have less restrictions than user you're using.

A repair reinstall will reset some settings - again not sure if it would help:-

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

 

[whatthe5846]

In gpedit.msc go to the following:


To get back Task Manager:
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Ctrl-Alt_Del Options > Remove Task Manager - Set it to Disabled.

To get back Command Prompt

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Prevent Access to the Command Prompt - Set it to disabled

If you can tell what other tools you need access to I can tell you how to get them back too. If that the above doesn't work post bacl and i'll give you the registry edits.