Vista upgrade over Xp has invalidated existing users. Cannot log i

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G

Guest

I upgraded my XP (Sp2 with all updates) to Vista Ultimate. When finished, it
presented me with two user logins which were present in XP and in
Administrators. When I log into these, it accepts the password (if I use an
invalid pw it tells me) and shows me the friendly Welcome message. The login
fails and Welcome turns into Logging Off...

Booting from dvd and going to recovery command prompt, I check the user
repository with the NET commands. It lists only Administrator and Guest as
available logins. The two users presented at login are not there. I use NET
User /ADD and NET LocalGroups /ADD to create a new user and add to Users and
Administrators. When I restart, the same original logins are presented, the
new user is not present and when I reboot to the recovery command prompt,
none of the changes or additions I previously made are present and only
Administrator and Guest are showing as users. There were 4 users and various
system accounts like ASPNET, IUSR_etc and IWAM_etc in XP. They are all gone!!

Clearly something is very wrong here. How can I force a login as
Administrator? I have been left with an entirely unaccessable system. It also
cannot be rolled back, as the upgrade process didn't see fit to keep a copy
of my previous os.

What now?
Thanks,
George
 
Hi George,

Check for Windows.old, and if it exists you can recover the original
installation:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933168

If you are familiar with tools like BartPE, you may be able to load the
system registry hive and check the logon entries, there most likely is
damage or invalid data under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
Rick,
Thanks for the BartPE info. I'll give that a try. Unfortunately, there is no
Windows.old directory. I dir'd using s and h attributes also. Do you know of
any good information links to the security entries in the registry hive?

Thanks again.
 
Hi George,

I see from your post that you have used an upgrade version of Vista. You
might be better off doing a clean install. Refer to my post 'Clean Install
Windows Vista Using Upgrade Media', also in this newsgroup, for detailed
instructions on how to do this.
Dwarf
 
Rick,
Tried this. BartPE is very cool. The registry editor plugin I included in
the install couldn't access the registry on the machine, so this was
unsuccessful.

I did find the answer in the Administration, Accounts and Passwords
newsgroup. Search there for "No Administrator; locked out" and see the second
post by a Jimmy Brush. The registry editing instructions saved the day.

Thanks for your help, too.
 
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