Idiot needs help.

[crewsor]

I know this will amuse some of you, but I went to change my administrator account name and must have missed clicking the apply button and now I have no administrator log in, or account.

The other accounts were all restricted users so now I can't do anything requiring admin. privilidges.

Does anyone know of a way to recover from this short of a system reinstall?

I'm running win 2k pro.

[The_Dude]

well, u should still have the account called "Administrator" that you created when windows was installed.

try logging in with "Adminstrator" as username and the password you chose.

i dont think you can change the attributes for this account.

[steveincolumbus]

never tried deleteing it but the Administrator account can be renamed and changed.
most security books you read will advise in renameing the admin account something other than administrator, b/c knowing the login is half the battle in hacking into a system...... plus makine a account named administrator and giveing it a LONNNNG password and then no privlagies..... so that it takes a long time to crack via brute force then if they get in they can't do anything


but if you deleted the only admin account i think you might need to reinstall windows..... unless there is a hack that can fix that...... come to think of it i think there is an artical in 2600 about how to make a admin account in a dos shell with only being a user........... if no one else knows i mght be able to dig it up but i am lazy and don't want to dig in boxes to find that issue.....

[charliex]

You can't delete the administrator account in windows nt,2k or XP, so thats kinda wierd

you can disable it, but it'll still be accesible in safe mode

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...ocal_users.asp

[crewsor]

Originally posted by charliex
You can't delete the administrator account in windows nt,2k or XP, so thats kinda wierd

you can disable it, but it'll still be accesible in safe mode

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...ocal_users.asp

Thanks guys, saved me again.
You are right charliex, it wasn't gone, just disabled.
Went into safe mode and got everything straight again.
Much thanks.

[d4in]

there is also a linux boot disk program called Offline NT Password and registry editor. It loads up a linux shell on boot and lets you access the SAM database where the passwords and account settings are stored. You can enable those disabled accounts or blank out passwords with it and then save the settings, pull the disk, and reboot. I don't know how many times this proggy has saved my butt. I work in a computer store and I get people come in and say that they forgot their password in xp or something and they are using the only administrator account. This works pretty much in any version of nt based systems (NT, 2000, xp) but i'm not sure about w2k3.

More info, docs, and downloads at http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/