jimauten said:
Hi, I am the IT person in my office by default. Here is the issue, I am
trying to log on to a laptop for which the start up user is no longer
employed by us. I tried using "admin" login and failed. Is there a back
door?
General instructions, take what is applicable to you:
If you have forgotten your password, if you have another user account with
administrative privileges you can log into that account and change your
original user account's password from the User Accounts applet in Control
Panel. If you don't have another account like this set up or don't have the
password to it, you'll need to log into the built-in Administrator account.
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/
Download the bootable CD .iso, burn with third-party burning software (as an
image, not as data), boot with the media you created. You may need to
change the boot order in the BIOS or get a temporary boot order menu with a
special keypress. NTpasswd will run. Follow the instructions carefully.
Then go to the User Accounts applet in Control Panel and set passwords that
you will remember and make other desired changes.
Malke
