get into account

[diduknowthat]

my friend by accident locked himself out of his system. He has windows xp and its a dell. His account is password protected and he forgot his password. Is there anyway he could get into the system w/o reformatting his harddrive?

 

[Geoff]

Boot into safemode and see if he can get into the "Administrator" account, from there he should be able to remove or change his user password.

 

[Yo-Yo]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305478/#XSLTH3126121124120121120120

If he has access to another PC with XP he could do that

 

[vortmax]

have him try and log in as "administrator" with no password.

So type in Administrator as the user name and just hit enter.

 

[diduknowthat]

Boot into safemode and see if he can get into the "Administrator" account, from there he should be able to remove or change his user password.

idk why, but his computer doesn't seem to have a safemode, or i just wasn't looking hard enough because it takes about 8 minutes to boot up everytime.

 

[Verve]

Any computer that takes 8 minutes to boot into the login screen has some issues. You may want to check that out too, there's possibly spyware/viruses.

 

[dragon2309]

immediately after the POST beep from the PC keep tapping F8 repeatedly very fast, until you get to the menu that has the option to boot into safe mode.....

If F8 doesnt do it then try F11


dragon2309

 

[Sivon]

liu, i think in his case, some serious bribes will be needed....

 

[tommydees]

My mom bought a PC from a pawn shop and it was password protected. I to went into safe mode and didnt have to put a password in to log in as the administrater. Once in i went to user accounts and just turned the password off. You can either turn it off or change it. So much for keeping people out with a password when if they know what there doing they can still get in. haha

 

[diduknowthat]

lol not my computer..oh well, yeah he's building his own pretty soon (assuming he doesn't fail his midterms =P) His computer does have some seriouse issues but its not his so he can't do anything with it. His parents are especially strict about that stuff. I mean his mom paid 250 dollars for a 6200 and a guy to install it cause she didn't trust me nor him with computer parts.