Chuck said:
I have moderate skills but maybe a little better in direction. What you
sent me took 45 minutes to read and still know answers.
Maybe this will help, Chuck. I will give you a fairly lengthy answer (and
I'm sorry, but it has to be lengthy) but if you work through it patiently
you'll be able to do this just fine. The actual work - not counting
downloading and burning NTpasswd - is easy and quick. It takes only a few
minutes to boot into NTpasswd and change your niece's password to a blank.
I'm assuming her user account was an administrator. When you get to the end
of the NTpasswd part, read my general instructions for setting up Vista
user accounts at the end of this post. If this really seems too hard - and
there is no shame in this because we all have our areas of expertise - have
your niece take the laptop to a nice tech like me who will get her all
fixed up in under 5 minutes. If you decide to go this route, don't use a
BigComputerStore/GeekSquad type of place. But you can do this. ;-)
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
Download the CD image (.iso) and burn as an image, not as data. This will
create a bootable CD. You will need third-party burning software. I agree
with Mr. Weisbord that ImgBurn is excellent. So download ImgBurn and
install it first.
http://www.imgburn.com/
Note: You don't need to download/install ImgBurn if you already have Nero or
Roxio! Again, you must burn as an *image* not as data.
Now that you've created the bootable CD with the .iso file you downloaded
from NTpasswd's website, boot with it. You may need to change the
computer's boot priority in the BIOS so the optical drive is first. Some
computers allow you to access a temporary boot menu instead of having to
change things in the BIOS. An example - to get the temporary boot menu on
Dell computers, press F12 when you start the machine.
So now you've booted with NTpasswd and you'll be in the program. Yes, it is
just text but you don't need to know any commands. Just read the
instructions and prompts carefully. You can usually just take the defaults.
When you get to the part about changing passwords, you will see your
niece's user account. Change that account's password to a blank. Now follow
the directions to save the changes and reboot your computer. Don't forget
to remove the CD so you don't boot into NTpasswd again!
Boot into Windows, log into your niece's user account (which will no longer
need a password), and there you go.
General suggestions for setting up user accounts in Vista:
You absolutely do not want to have only one user account. Like XP and all
other modern operating systems, Vista is a multi-user operating system with
built-in system accounts such as Administrator, Default, All Users, and
Guest. These accounts should be left alone as they are part of the
operating system structure.
You particularly don't want only one user account with administrative
privileges on Vista because the built-in Administrator account (normally
only used in emergencies) is disabled by default. If you're running as
Administrator for your daily work and that account gets corrupted, things
will be Difficult. It isn't impossible to activate the built-in
Administrator to rescue things, but it will require third-party tools and
working outside the operating system.
The user account that is for your daily work should be a Standard user, with
the extra administrative user (call it something like "CompAdmin" or "Tech"
or the like) only there for elevation purposes. After you create
"CompAdmin", log into it and change your regular user account to Standard.
Then log back into your regular account.
If you want to go directly to the Desktop and skip the Welcome Screen with
the icons of user accounts, you can do this:
Start Orb>Search box>type: netplwiz [enter]
Click on Continue (or supply an administrator's password) when prompted by
UAC
Uncheck the option "Users must enter a user name and password to use this
computer". Select a user account to automatically log on by clicking on the
desired account to highlight it and then hit OK. Enter the correct password
for that user account (if there is one) when prompted. Leave it blank if
there is no password (null).
Malke
