i locked myself out of windows xp about two years ago. help!

space_satan

okay so it goes like this. i was madly in lust with this girl. so i changed my password to reflect that (a very loooong password) so i go to get back into my username (only name with administrative properties) and cant get it. i've tried it over a thousand times in the last 2 years. any ideas on how i can get back in? cause i have a pretty rad setup and i like to play pc games. but cant because without those god damn administrative properties i cant download anything or install anything. i'm still on flash 7. please help.

devoir

Start in Safe Mode, log in as Administrator and reset your password for your normal user account.

You know your Administrator password, don't you?

If you don't, google for "reset windows xp administrator password". Should be a set of files you can copy to a floppy disk or CD, boot into and then reset the administrator password that way.

space_satan

devoir wrote: »

Start in Safe Mode, log in as Administrator and reset your password for your normal user account.

You know your Administrator password, don't you?

If you don't, google for "reset windows xp administrator password". Should be a set of files you can copy to a floppy disk or CD, boot into and then reset the administrator password that way.

see thats the problem. if your talking about the administrator password as being the one i use to log into the computer. then thats the one i just couldnt ever get right again after i set it.

Silmaril

If you start in safe mode, there will be an account called administrator

Unless you've purposefully set up a password on that account there won't be a password on it. Go in with that and do the necessary.

space_satan

i'm kinda computer retarded. how do i start it in safe mode?

Silmaril

Click Start, Run and type MSCONFIG in the box and click OK
The System Configuration Utility appears, On the BOOT.INI tab, Check the "/SAFEBOOT" option, and then click OK and Restart your computer when prompted.
The computer restarts in Safe mode.
Perform the troubleshooting steps for which you are using Safe Mode.
When you are finished with troubleshooting in Safe mode, open MSCONFIG again, on the BOOT.INI tab, uncheck "/SAFEBOOT" and click OK to restart your computer

FyreWulff

Once you are in Safe Mode, what you want to do is log into your ADMINISTRATOR account (hopefully it doesn't have a password)

then Start > Control Panel > User Accounts

go to your account and Clear Password/Set Password


OK, save, restart, there you go.

Mr_Grinch

Or, alternatively to get in to safemode just hammer F8 when your computer is booting up (after bios screen, before windows xp screen) and select Safe Mode from the menu.

blincoln

If there *is* a password on the local administrator account, you can get around that in at least two ways:

- Use a boot disc to reset the local admin password. This is the one I've used before.
- If either your regular password or the admin password are less than 15 characters long and don't use too many unusual characters, you can probably recover them using the OphCrack boot disc. This will take a bit longer, but IMO rates higher on the l33+ scale. There are rainbow table sets for it that will handle special characters, but they won't fit on the boot disc so they're for advanced use only.