Administrator password & Recovery Console

I just hit the enter key at the password prompt for RC. Not saying you haven't tried it though.

I suggest trying something close to 10 gigs each. Or maybe 5 partitions of 11.8 gigs and 1 partition of 1 gig. You were kidding, right?

Yup, been there, done that. Enter key doesn't work. It's almost like someone installed an Administrator at Dell before shipping with their own password, because it was already there when I installed my own, and remained afterwards. And I have no option to delete it either.

No, I wasn't kidding about partitioning the drive-I prefer 6 separate drives to keep my business data separate from personal. Much easier to find since I use Windows Explorer extensively.

Radodge,

Well thank you! I thought I was going crazy. I didn't think that I asked to setup an administrator account, but then again I was initially so excited at getting the machine and answering stupid questions like giving the machine a name, that I honestly forgot if I had or had not given a password. Certaily before I started having problems I was not using password to logon to the system.

I'm convinced now that based on the info in the previous two post here, I DID NOT create an administrator password. Using The ENTER key in Recovery Console does nothing except tell me the password is invalid.

Dell Tech Support said there was not way out but a Format and re-install and I'm pretty furious with this.

Seems to me that there must be a password that Dell has created for these machines. PLEASE GIVE IT TO US so we can use the tools that are on our machines.!!

Tony_g

Dimension 8200 XPHome
radodge wrote:
-
-
-
- Yup, been there, done that. Enter key doesn't work.
- It's almost like someone installed an Administrator
- at Dell before shipping with their own password,
- because it was already there when I installed my
- own, and remained afterwards. And I have no option
- to delete it either.
-
- No, I wasn't kidding about partitioning the drive-I
- prefer 6 separate drives to keep my business data
- separate from personal. Much easier to find since I
- use Windows Explorer extensively.
-
-
-
-
-

I had the same problem, and yes, Dell's software support for XP leaves much to be desired. You will find the info you need in Microsoft's Knowledgebase article Q-308402.

Pierre

radodge,

sorry, about the partition thing. I thought you were joking.

If it were me, I would buy a copy of Partition Magic 7.0. This is nothing short of fantastic for working with hard drives and partitions. It will let you create, size, resize, merge, move, and a lot of other things, all on the fly, with no harm to your data. I highly recommend it. Well worth the money.


Mike
Dimension 8200, P4 1.8GHz, 768MB PC800 RDRAM, Windows XP Home Edition

Message Edited on 02/02/02 05:01PM by mgervin

Pierre,

Thanks. Did you actually try it. The description seems very confusing since the file to download is used for creating 6 boot up floppy disks in case you can't boot from the CD ROM. Does running these 6 floppies install the fixes so Recovery Console can be used without a password.

Do I really just need the two files mentioned at the end of the article.

---------------------------------------------------
05/11/01 13:57 5.1.2600.15 225,152 Spcmdcon.sys
11/12/01 04:48 5.1.2600.21 218,624 Srrstr.dll

The files on my system, which was shipped on Jan 7, 2002 are dated August and are different in size.

Thanks
Tony

Look,
The problem has to to with the method that windows was installed on your system in the factory. Ordinarily, you would enter required information as windows installs and the registry is created as you go. When the os is factory loaded, it is installed along with program called 'out of box experience' which allows the owner to enter his/her personal information and have it entered in the registry. This process seems to corrupt the registry entries which store passwords and, yes, windows appears to believe that an admin password is there which you may not get past. Really, all you need to do is reload windows completely, (yeah I know). This will have the registry recreated and the problem will be gone. Otherwise, the microsoft article is your best bet.
***Note***
You may also decide to perform a parallel install of windows which will allow you to copy your personal information into the new os and then you may delete the old installation and edit the Boot.ini file to reflect your correct installation.
Personally, the reinstall idea is the more appealing and you have all media necessary to reinstall your factory loaded applications.

Good luck!!!!

I went through the same thing. Dell's XP support: Reformat and Reinstall. That was the only way I got around it. The reinstall was really pretty painless though. Also, I'm not sure we've heard the last of this Dell branded version of XP - has anyone ever tried to do a chkdsk /f and still you never seem to get rid of any errors on the drive ?

Tony,

I did create the 6- disc set and used it to boot up. That did install the correct version of the 2 files and solved the password problem. It beats reinstalling XP in terms of time and risk involved.

Pierre

Pierre:

Ok, I've tried that, but obviously, I'm doing something wrong. I booted up with the disks, and got to the part about insert my Windows CD, which I did. Then it proceeded to look like it was going to completely reinstall Windows, so I backed out. Am I supposed to continue through that whole process of reinstalling XP, or is it going to find those particular files immediately & fix this problem?

There is a simple fix to the problem of the recovery console password problem:

Go into the control panels and open up the following:

Control Panels
Switch to Classic View (upper left hand corner)
Administrative Tools
Local Security Policy
Under Security Settings, click on:
Local Policies
User Rights Assignments
Security Options
Scroll down to "Recovery Console: Allow automatic administrator logon"
Change this to "enable"
Back out and restart and you should be able to boot up the recovery console without having to enter any passwords.
Technical support walked me through this this am and it worked just fine after experiencing all the same password problems described.

Now a question for all of you:

How do I uninstall the recovery console from my system. I used the winnt32 command to install it to Windows startup, so now everytime I reboot, I have to choose either XP or the recovery console. Would like to now get rid of this. Any thoughts?

Regarding the recovery console, do you want to remove it because of the choice and length of waiting? I have WinXP Pro and both of these things are configurable. On my system, the system choice defaults to WinXP after only 3 seconds (if I haven't chosen the recovery console). And if I'm feeling really impatient--'cuz, jeez, 3 WHOLE seconds!--I simply hit before the 3 seconds to choose the default.

Go to Control Panel> System> Advanced tab.
In the "Startup and Recovery" section, click the Settings button.
Set your preferences.

You can choose which system to boot, number of seconds to wait for choice, and more. I wait 3 seconds but you might set it for less as a challenge. Some nice hacker or programmer out there should write a little app to add some graphics: Who knew Redmond was offering users a mini-game to enhance hand-eye coordination?

Christian

Dimension 8100 Pentium4 - 1.5GHz
Windows XP Pro + updates
Dell BIOS version XP2
2 - 40GB Western Digital Ultra ATA Hard Drives
256MB PC800 RDRAM
17" P780 FD Trinitron Monitor
32MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 4x AGP w/TV out
SB Live! Digital Sound Card
Castlewood Orb 2.2GB removable drive
Harmon Kardon speakers
16X/10X/40X CD-RW drive
Logitech Cordless Keyboard
Logitech Cordless Trackman FX mouse
3Com Etherlink 10/100 PCI Ethernet Controller
Alcatel Speed Touch Home ADSL Modem
Lexmark Z43 Inkjet Printer
Visioneer OneTouch 8600 Scanner
Lucent 56K V.90 WinModem
Iomega Zip100 Parallel Port

MS Office XP Pro
Ontrack SystemSuite 4 (antivirus, system maint.)

Message Edited by Solar1919 on 01-16-2005 11:03 AM