john1221 0 Posted September 2, 2004 Now I can't login to window xp home as usual! There's even no "user name & Password" appeared on the welcome window! I tried to use "ctrl+alt+del" to have the classic login window showed up, but my user name doesn't work anymore!(I have only one user name and without a password), and administrator is not working either! I tried Safe Mode but it's the same, it seems that there's a password has been set up and I don't know it! It's weird because my wife just used the computer 1 hour ago and everything was fine! She just visited ebay and received some emails with outlook express and then turned the computer off, but when I restarted the computer one hours later, I find the user name & password disappeared on welcome window! I have many important files and unfortunitely I didn't make any backup, so I really don't want to reinstall windows xp, it'll be appreciated if someone could help me with this. Thanks! Share this post Link to post
ross_aveling 0 Posted September 3, 2004 I can't explain why your machine is behaving like it is, but if you need to reset your Administrator's password there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can use a Linux bootdisk to reset all passwords back to blank. It's a bit of a long (and scary) read so take your time. Essentially, create the floppy boot disk (ignore the stuff about SCSI drivers, unless your disks are SCSI ones of course), boot up and follow the on-screen options. I have never had to use this procedure, so some other members may be able to help you further. Hope this can help you at all. Share this post Link to post
MILLYFISH 0 Posted February 21, 2005 Hello Unfortunately I had the same problem on a laptop. I downloaded the bootable CD version and used it to boot the machine. The program worked fine until it got to the "sam" file which should contain the usernames and passwords. Unfortunately, the message said "there are no usernames in this file" - this was immediately after a full install when I deliberately put in two usernames. Tried every other "sam" file in the windows directory and all subdirectories and couldn't find any usernames anywhere. In the end, I used a Knoppix CD (works entirely off the CD) to access the NTFS partition (where all the data files were) and copied all the stuff across a network to my desktop PC. Once the data was safe I tried a few things on the laptop hard-drive. The outcome was that only a complete format of the drive (I actually re-partitioned it) and a full Windows XP re-install from scratch would cure the problem. Good Luck !! Regards Millyfish Share this post Link to post
theefool 0 Posted February 22, 2005 John, have you tried entering into safe mode? Share this post Link to post
