No user accounts to log onto

[iblearnen]

Greetings, I have run into a very unusual dilemma. My client’s laptop appears to be password protected. This is the interesting part. When I start the computer and get to the
XP (Home) welcome screen there is nothing on the right side of the screen,
No user accounts to log onto. My only choice is to restart the machine. I tried this dandy little W2k/XP password change utility. It tells me there are no user accounts? I tried to log-on in safe mode and it brings me back to the welcome screen. I also tried using the recovery console, nothing seems to work. When I do the three finger salute a users name comes up, however he insists he never created the account and he insists the machine was never password protected. I even did a nondestructive OS reinstall, nothing. (Bottom line, They need the data) other wise I would format the drive and do a clean install. Any Ideas? Thanks

 

[BionicJohn]

The secure logon requires users to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del first.

Logon as an Adminstrator and reset the options in control Panel -> Users.

LIVERPOOL FC - 5 times Champions of Europe. 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005.
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[vacunita]

If you can't logon as an admin as BigJohn suggested. I suggest you remove the drive from the laptop and connected as a slave to another PC. For this, they sell these little adaptors to connect laptop drives to standard IDE cables of Desktop computers. Once that is done the drive should come up and you can copy all the files from the drive onto another one. Once that is donde you can format and reinstall.

Then put all the files back.


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[iblearnen]

I did try to Logon as an Adminstrator and use nothing for ths P/W. The laptop is owened by the city, they told me they dident want to try the HD removel trick. Any other ideas are welcome, Thanks by the way

 

[tekuser999]

Get the ultimate boot CD (forgot the URL so you have to google for it). Change boot order to CD first and boot from the UBCD. Use the password reset feature to reset the administrator password and then hopefully, you can log in.

hope this helps.

 

[linney]

Were you able to login using the Recovery Console?

If you can't with the XP Recovery Console, due to a bug the Windows 2000 Recovery Console may allow a logon.

What you do after that is anyones guess but you could try this procedure.

An easy to follow recovery console description when unable to start computer due to corrupt registry.

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm

This is a layman's version of Q307545 in simple language.


Some other last hope options to try are these.

You might be able to make use of BartPE (a mini XP self contained on a bootable CD and run from CD).

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

The same might be possible with a parallel install of XP.

266465 - HOW TO: Perform a Parallel Installation of Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266465&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

You can do the same with XP. Don't install any unnecessary programs just some virus scanners, keep the parallel installation as simple as possible.

Or the paragraph in this article.

"To install Windows XP to a new folder (to perform a parallel installation):"

How to install or upgrade to Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316941&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[BionicJohn]

Is there any Novell Netware software installed, or perhaps incompletely unistalled?

Novell will disable the Welcome screen and fast user switching.

LIVERPOOL FC - 5 times Champions of Europe. 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005.
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.