Guy screwed himself changing passwords

[kranich]

This is on W2K Pro.

I have a contact (not a customer) that went into "control panel- users and passwords- administrator- group properties" and placed the administrators acount from "other- administrator" to "restricted".

Now as you can guess he cannot run defrag or anything else important. When he tried to change it back from "restricted" to "other- administrator" he found that he was unable to access group properties.

Obviously the guy screwed his one and only administrator account.

Before I advise a reinstall are there any hints I am not thinking of here? He can't create a new admin account or access the now defunct properties from management console.

A repair install will not solve this will it?

[Bill in SD, CA]

You might find some help here:

Forgot the Administrator's Password

Seems some of the solutions here allow entry into the Domain Controller where you can edit the management console.

Bill

[phenious]

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

should allow you to modify the password and the group the user is in so you can get back to normal, if not it also allows you to create a new user in any group

-: phenious :-

[kranich]

Sorry for the confusion but the issue is this.

He had two user accounts (say user 1 and user 2- both restricted) plus the administrator account and guest that is built in.

So he goes to:

Control Panel > Users and Passwords > Users (tab)

He selected Administrator and clicked on Properties

He then deselected “Other- Administrator” and selected “Restricted”.

Then he logged off and re logged on as user 1 (which is also restricted along with User 2).

So now he discovers he needs to change it back so he logs on as administrator again and tries to switch back. He then discovers that he can no longer access the Properties for the administrative account (because he is restricted now on that account).

In a nut shell- he lowered the one and only admin account to restricted and now can’t change it back. Furthermore, because all accounts are now restricted he cannot create a different administrator account.

Will try the one that allows you to chage groups and let you know.

[grandchehaw]

Hmmm...maybe ERD Commander would help you out. I have an older version and it has saved me many hours when an end user decided to change the password only to forget it a week later.

http://www.winternals.com/products/r...mander2002.asp

[vass0922]

I thought the OS didn't allow you to edit the administrator (or any builtin for that matter).

[phenious]

The toll I listed should allow you to change groups and if needed create a new user in the Admin Group

-: phenious :-