NO access to Administator on XP

Not sure why or how, but our Administrator account is gone. We cannot do anything since all involves being an admin. This includes making an admin account. I did try to acess windows through safe mode..


Please Help!

 

Just curious, why do you think you administrator account is gone? Are you sure you just didn't forget the password? And are you sure the Admin account isn't just disabled?

 

Connie:

Welcome to the BBS. As ldaschle queried, what makes you think the Administrator account is gone? I'll guarantee you its still there. A little more information will be helpful but if you tried starting in Safe mode I think you saw the option to log onto the Administrator account was still there.

 

Somewhere in the helpscreens (I can't find it at the moment) it's specified that it's impossible to delete the last user account with admin privileges. By default this comes pre-loaded and is called Administrator. You could delete this account only if you've first created another one with Admin privileges. So by definition (unless something has gone seriously wrong!) you must have an administrator account - although possibly under some other name, if you've done this deliberately. And as Rockster said, it's visible if you log on in Safe mode (usually by pressing [F8] before WXP starts loading). If you don't see one called "Administrator ", log on anyway to any account you can, and then, via Control Panel, look at User Accounts: you should see a list of accounts specifying which have Admin privileges and which are limited.
Note also that, if I remember rightly, the preloaded, default Admin account comes without a password and you need to specify one. It's advisable to do that as early as possible, and definitely before using internet.

 

Getting a little more technical ------ It is impossible to delete the Administrator account which is quite different than an account with administrative privledges. Maybe I shouldn't say its impossible because I suppose somewhere, someone may have done this but it's doubtful. It would, at the very least, require being logged in as "System" and there are very few who know how to get around XP's security and log on as System which is a tier above "Administrator ". Most good techs aren't even familiar with this.

One can hit cntrl-alt-del twice at log on time to bring up a more traditional log on screen. Then type Administrator as the User name and put the administrator password in the password field. If you don't know the password, leave it blank and hit enter (default for most major mfg machines). If that doesn't do the trick, there are ways to reset the Administrator account password from any account with administrative privledges and there are ways to determine what the password is but we aren't going to discuss this further.