Re: Bad XP problem

From: Art (plotsligt_at_comcast.net)
Date: 08/26/04 

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:13:33 -0400

Very interesting scenario and resolve, hopefully it works when the second
edition updates are finally installed!! Been BETA testing it for a while
and like some of the embellishments but can still make it crash!! More fun
with these infernal machines!!
 Also had a sys that I had totally configured for a customer, at their
request installed both admin and user passwords as well as my personalized
bios password.
They called back about a week later telling me that the son had gotten into
the unit and messed it up again. Asking who gave him the information the
customer told me that they had given him the admin password by mistake.
My respond was to ask them if the still had the emergency boot disk that I
gave them. response was yes, then I asked them to boot the system with that
disk and wait until the A> came up.
 At which time walked them thru the FDISK functions and the FORMAT
functions. When the unit rebooted they said," but now all we get is the C>
on the screen".
My response was to go buy what operating system they wanted to install, the
application programmes, and have at installing it. That since the system
recognized the C drive that it was functional. End of story!!~
"JURB6006" <jurb6006@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040823215549.20025.00001576@mb-m25.aol.com...
> This has to do with a lost admin password in XP. The PC won't boot, it
locks
> before even running GUI. There are alot of important files in a private
folder,
> stuff the guy would pay money to recover. Without the admin PW we can't
repair
> the OS with the XP CD, and we were the ones who put it in. It's possible
that
> the SAM files are corrupt.
>
> I wasn't that confident that anything would work, but I've tried
installing a
> fresh boot HD and loading it fresh with XP, cloning the drive and then
letting
> XP install over itself, but loading from either it won't give me access to
the
> protected files for the owner's account. We know the PW for that account,
but
> the admin, when you go into safe mode, well I PW protected that as well.
(few
> people know you can do that)
>
> I've read that the NTFS doesn't help either, and when I go to access that
> directory it gives a MB beep. Doesn't sound promising.
>
> Could I possible copy the SAM files to the clone, which boots ? Then I
could
> maybe use the original login. Another possiblility would be a registry
merge.
> Do you think any of this might work, or am I just fucked ?
>
>
> FYI, the PC is : P4 2600HT on an Asus MB with 512MB and 2 80GB Maxtors, a
> Plextor DVD burner and a region/authentication free DVDROM, authentic ATI
> Radeon 7500 (64MB) w/TV tuner and vid and SVID outputs. The Asus has
onboard
> netcard and Ali sound. Once it's up and running I'm adding a Firewire
card,
> which is one of the few things other than RAID which this MB lacks. Even
so,
> there's about $1000 tied up in this box, about a year ago. It might be
worth
> saving. :)
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
> JURB