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May 2nd, 2004 23:00
Reset windows xp logon password
My daughter came home from college and I changed her domain so she can view files on our home peer to peer network. When I restarted her notebook it is looking for a windows logon. It wont except her old logon from the other domain. Does dell have a pre-set administrator password so I can try to reset it thru safemode or is there a way to get into logon with out a password? I am lost.Thanks,
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IG-88
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May 3rd, 2004 02:00
Ah yes, I think everyone in IT is familiar with this one.
Unfortunately there is no "backdoor" and for good reason as you can imagine. Your best bet is to boot into Safe Mode (F8 before the Windows XP startup screen) and just try guessing passwords. The default administrative user is "Administrator" so first try a blank password, then "password". You may get lucky there. If you changed the password for it in the past try using your regular passwords. I'm guessing it'll be blank though.
When/if you get in you can change the password in the User Accounts applet in Control Panel. If you removed the domain from the computer her account will not work so don't bother messing with it. And when she gets back to school an IT person will have to re-add it to the domain.
If it doesn't work there is nothing you can do other than re-installing Windows. There are other ways albiet a little more difficult like installing Windows in a different location on the same hard drive or using modified bootdisks but hopefully you can get into the admin account without problems.