Administrator Not Available

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Guest

My brother recently passed away and I have inherited his computer. He was a
techie - I'm not. The Windows XP Pro has his name and asks for his password,
which I don't know. Is there anyway that I can either delete him as the
Administrator or will I need to delete the entire WinXP Pro completely and
reinstall (and if this is the case, how do I do that?)
 
Restart and hit the F8 key and start in SAFE mode as administrator with no
password.

Create 2 more user with admin rights without a password and restart
 
XP said:
Restart and hit the F8 key and start in SAFE mode as administrator
with no password.

Create 2 more user with admin rights without a password and restart
Click to expand...

Please quote at least some of the post to which you are replying. The OP
asked:

"My brother recently passed away and I have inherited his computer. He
was a techie - I'm not. The Windows XP Pro has his name and asks for
his password, which I don't know. Is there anyway that I can either
delete him as the Administrator or will I need to delete the entire
WinXP Pro completely and reinstall (and if this is the case, how do I
do that?)"

It is not necessary to go into Safe Mode in XP Pro to access the
built-in Administrator account. You only need to do that in XP Home.
However, the concept you suggest is correct.

Arnie - If you are getting the Welcome Screen when you start Windows,
press Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to get the classic logon box. Type in
"Administrator" without the quotes and try leaving the password blank.
If that doesn't work because a password was set - or because your
brother was using the built-in Administrator account for daily use (not
recommended), use NTpasswd to change the Administrator password to a
blank. Then log in and go to the User Accounts applet to make desired
changes, create user accounts, etc.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

However, it is best practice with a second-hand computer to do a clean
install of Windows. Here are the links to help you with that:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#reinstall_Windows - What
you will need on-hand

Since you say you "are not a techie", it may be more efficient for you
to take the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your
local version of BigStoreUSA).

Malke
 
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