Baffled! Can't get administrator rights, help!

D

dustman

New Member
I just bought a used HP Pavilion a747c computer. It had viruses, so I had to wipe the hard drive. I loaded Windows XP-Pro (legit) and it loaded beautifully. But I needed the drivers for the other components, and they are readily available on the HP support site. BUT... I can download anything I want, but when I try to install it, it says I must be logged on as the administrator. I am. Still, no go. I have created different administrator accounts, different passwords, etc, and STILL can't install anything. I tried to download the free edition of AVG virus protection, same thing, I can download it, but not install. Again, must be the administrator. I can't understand this. I saw on an online forum to go to the registry, the HKEY route, through the current installed version, software, and to change permissions under security. Guess what? No security listing, no permissions listing either. I wiped the hard drive again. Installed a different XP-Pro, SP3, same identical thing. Loaded perfectly, made myself the administrator, tried installing the drivers again, and I am still denied permission, I must be the administrator!! Can anybody help me? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. (I know HP loads the recovery stuff on another drive, but that was corrupted, and is gone now.)

Again, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dustman
 
Doesn't sound like your installation was a clean one. Did you delete the existing partitions first when booting to the install cd?
 
Hello, johnb35,

Thanks for the post. The first time I wiped the disk, there were 2 partitions, the 2nd and 3rd time there was only 1 (see exception below on the 3rd time). It's a 160GB hard drive, but it shows 156 MB. When you start, the HP screen comes up first, and at the bottom there is a line that says F-1 to get into bios, and F-10 for recovery. If you click on F-10, nothing happens, and it then proceeds to load Windows normally. I can get on the net, set everything up, everything works fine, except it is like I am on the guest account every time. I can download, but not install.

I did notice something I hadn't seen before the last time I loaded Windows. When it comes to the partition screen, it offers the 156 hard drive first, then 3 other items, all 0 MB, that appear to be the various drives (card reader, etc). It won't let me select any of them, and down on the bottom, at the right, was the word "more" and a down arrow. It wouldn't let me scroll down through any of these items, or see if anything was below "more". None of that was there on the second install, just on the third.

Have you ever run into any of this?

Thanks,

Dustman
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top