XP Boot - Account

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

My Dad's XP Home edition (SP1 - 1 yr old) suddenly stopped working. He's not
on the Internet and the only files he gets is from me so I doubt that it's a
virus.

I went to the MS knowledgebase. It did not have my specific problem but I
tried some of their boot solutions with no luck.

I checked the battery because I read that a bad battery might affect the
BIOS. It was ok. In any case, my Dad always plugs in the pc. However, I did
notice that the power light never turned green but kept flickering yellow
with the pc plugged in.

I booted the pc, no MS music played, the Welcome screen displayed but minus
the account name. I passed the mouse over the screen to see if the account
name was there and clickable but just not showing. The only thing I was able
to do from this screen was Turn off Computer.
I re-booted, hit F2, but saw no obvious errors.
I re-booted and hit F8 and tried Safe Mode. Same result - Welcome screen but
no account name. I tried re-booting with F8 many times using all of the
available boot options. Same result.
I even tried to bypass the Welcome screen by using the keyboard shortcut for
Start but that didn't work.
His pc (Compaq) came with 4 Quick Recovery disks (why 4?) which I hesitate
to use just yet because I don't know the ramifications. The other alternative
is to re-install XP.

I'm hoping for a simpler solution and a way to avoid this problem in the
future.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Hi,

Boot back into Safe Mode and press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice at the welcome
screen. You should be able to logon to the hidden administrator
account from there. Go to Start - Run and type Control Passwords2
and press enter. Does your Dads account still exist?

--
Regards,
Bert Kinney [MS-MVP DTS]
http://dts-l.org/

howto wrote:
> My Dad's XP Home edition (SP1 - 1 yr old) suddenly
> stopped working. He's not on the Internet and the only
> files he gets is from me so I doubt that it's a virus.
>
> I went to the MS knowledgebase. It did not have my
> specific problem but I tried some of their boot solutions
> with no luck.
>
> I checked the battery because I read that a bad battery
> might affect the BIOS. It was ok. In any case, my Dad
> always plugs in the pc. However, I did notice that the
> power light never turned green but kept flickering yellow
> with the pc plugged in.
>
> I booted the pc, no MS music played, the Welcome screen
> displayed but minus the account name. I passed the mouse
> over the screen to see if the account name was there and
> clickable but just not showing. The only thing I was able
> to do from this screen was Turn off Computer.
> I re-booted, hit F2, but saw no obvious errors.
> I re-booted and hit F8 and tried Safe Mode. Same result -
> Welcome screen but no account name. I tried re-booting
> with F8 many times using all of the available boot
> options. Same result.
> I even tried to bypass the Welcome screen by using the
> keyboard shortcut for Start but that didn't work.
> His pc (Compaq) came with 4 Quick Recovery disks (why 4?)
> which I hesitate to use just yet because I don't know the
> ramifications. The other alternative is to re-install XP.
>
> I'm hoping for a simpler solution and a way to avoid this
> problem in the future.
> Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.