password

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Dawson
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Dave Dawson

Has anyone else ever had XP assign the password you entered for an
individual account to the Administrator instead and who knows what to the
account you entered it for?

Dave
 
Dave said:
Has anyone else ever had XP assign the password you entered for an
individual account to the Administrator instead and who knows what to the
account you entered it for?
Click to expand...

No. This cannot happen magically all by itself. It is unclear from your post
what exactly you've done, but if you need to get into the Administrator
account in order to change user passwords:

In XP Home, boot the computer into Safe Mode. Do this by repeatedly tapping
the F8 key as the computer is starting up. This will get you to the right
menu. Navigate using your Up arrow key; the mouse will not work here. Once
in Safe Mode, you will see the normally hidden Administrator account. The
default password is a blank.

In XP Pro, you do not need to go into Safe Mode. At the Welcome Screen, do
Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to get the classic Windows logon box. Type in
"Administrator" and whatever password you assigned when you set up Windows.

If you reset the built-in Administrator account's password in Home or have
Pro and don't remember the password, use NTpasswd to change the built-in
Administrator account's password to a blank.

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

Then go to the User Accounts applet in Control Panel and set passwords that
you will remember and make other desired changes.

Malke
 
Sorry, it *did* happen magically all by itself. In XP Pro, I assigned the
password to the user's account. Only the user's account and the Guest
account were available, so I know for sure that's the account I assigned it
to. I then re-started to show the user how to log in with his password.

I entered the password...nothing. Tried caps lock...nothing. Shifted my
fingers on the keyboard and did the same pattern...nothing. Bottom line,
nothing worked. I re-booted to safe mode and tried the administrator
password I would normally have initially set (if any, apparently I had left
it blank)...nothing. I tried blank password...nothing. I then thought
"what the hell" and entered the password I had assigned in the user's
account and got right in.

Made me want to hurt somebody for a little bit. ;-)

Dave
 
Dave said:
Sorry, it *did* happen magically all by itself. In XP Pro, I assigned the
password to the user's account. Only the user's account and the Guest
account were available, so I know for sure that's the account I assigned
it
to. I then re-started to show the user how to log in with his password.

I entered the password...nothing. Tried caps lock...nothing. Shifted my
fingers on the keyboard and did the same pattern...nothing. Bottom line,
nothing worked. I re-booted to safe mode and tried the administrator
password I would normally have initially set (if any, apparently I had
left
it blank)...nothing. I tried blank password...nothing. I then thought
"what the hell" and entered the password I had assigned in the user's
account and got right in.
Click to expand...

Then you are the only one it has ever happened to in all the millions of XP
users. You apparently had already changed that password for the built-in
Administrator and forgotten about it or you assigned the password to the
wrong account. Since you have Pro, you didn't need to boot to Safe Mode to
access the built-in Administrator account so if you didn't know that basic
information (and I even gave it to you in my last post), then perhaps you
did something else untoward when you were working with User Accounts in
Administrative Tools.

I'm sorry but this has to be PEBKAC, not something in the operating system.

Since you no longer have the problem, it's a non-issue. Write your passwords
down somewhere safe.

Malke
 
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