I'm not sure if it is the same in Windows XP Home, but in pro there is an
Administrator account (the system account), and then you are prompted to make
a user account by default. The system account should never be able to be
deleted, locked out, or become a non-administrator, so you probably are
acting under a second account that was also granted administrative
privilages. If you log out of this account (don't fast switch users) and all
other accounts on this machine, I believe you can hit control-alt-delete at
the Logon screen which will cause a dialog box to come up allowing you to
enter any username and password. You can then enter Administrator (the
default name for that account), and the password you chose during
installation. Try blank as a password if need be. Once you are in, you can
then go to start, run, and type control userpasswords2 and you will get a
list of the user accounts. Then just reassign your normal account admin
privilages.
If the ctrl-alt-delete doesn't work, try restarting in safe mode, which I
believe will show Administrator as an option on the fast-user/logon screen.
-Will
