Admin Account Lost Permissions: HELP! (Tech Vanity)

Windows XP ^ | July 15, 2005 | Alouette

[Alouette]

Dear FReepers,

I don't normally post Vanities or requests for tech support, but I have reached the end of my patience.

About 6 months ago, I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2. Unfortunately as many other people have experienced, it broke a lot of stuff and so I rolled back to Service Pack 1. Rolling back restored basic functionality, but broke other stuff, such as: ability to start and stop IIS, set Disk properties, set permissions, edit local policy, create and edit ODBC data sources, and other stuff that requires Administrator privileges. Unfortunately, the Administrator account has lost these privileges.

I'm now in the process of creating a development environment for a new web project, and this permissions issue has become critical.

I have searched for a solution to this problem. Microsoft does not have an answer in their knowledge base. There was one user who posted at experts-exchange.com with the same problem, but no one there had an answer.

So FReepers, now I appeal to you. Does anyone here know how to restore functionality to a busted Admin account?

Here is my machine configuration:

Windows XP Professional, SP1, rolled back from SP2
1Ghz processor
40GB HD (about 60% full and defragged)
256MB RAM
Samsung DVD-ROM
Lite-on CDRW
Microtek Scanmaker E3 SCSI scanner (a real antique!)
Comcast Broadband, SMC Barricade router

Installed Programs:
MS Office 2003
MS Frontpage 2003 (FP extensions are busted)
Macromedia Studio MX
MS Visual InterDev 6.0
MS Visual Basic 6.0
Adobe Photoshop CS
Adobe Illustrator 10
Norton Internet Security 2005 (I'm told this can break things)
Ad Aware SE
Spybot Search & Destroy
Roxio CD & DVD Creator 6

[Billthedrill]

I almost hate to ask it, but do you have a recent System State backup?

[ShadowAce]

Yeah--DL Knoppix, or another security-minded linux distro. They include tools for resetting the Admin account password to anything you want.

[finnman69]

SYSTEM RESTORE

[ShadowAce]

You can also try the Ultimate Boot CD. It also includes that functionality.

[Alouette]

Rolling back from SP2 also broke System Restore points. I have a registry backup from December 2004 (before applying SP2). Somewhere.

[Perdogg]

I would get rid of the Spybot. If you have Norton you don't need Windows SP2. This came from an engineer at Norton.

[NormsRevenge]

Insert Microsoft XP 'Recover Your System Sanity' Token

Here ==> [|]

Good luck! FReepers give great tech support!

I'm still running W98SE

[KoRn]

Re-install Windows. That's what I would do.

[Zavien Doombringer]

The only way to restore back to XP sp1 from sp2 is a reformat. Try to back up as much data that you need and reload XP

Your OS will never work right if you don't.

[Alouette]

If all else fails I will have to do a wipe and reinstall.

Which programs should I not keep? (Thinking of switching from Norton to McAfee)

[HEY4QDEMS]

If it were me, I'd try to backup as many files as I could and the do a full reinstall.

Issues like the kind your PC is experiencing always seem to have residual effects that will linger long after you get your admin profile corrected, that is if you get it corrected.

[KillTime]

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Hack into your XP admin acct and change it to what you want.

This works, we use it all the time for forgotten/corrupt passwords.

Go to that link, hit the DOWNLOAD tab on top, go to bottom of page and pick either floppy boot disk (bd050303.zip) or CD boot (cd050303.zip) For CD you will have to know how to burn to a CD, but if not there are directions on that page.

Follow prompts once you boot with the hack and select all defaults.

[GeorgiaFreeper]

Have you tried following the instructions in this Microsoft Technical article:

How To Reset Security Settings Back to the Defaults

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;313222

[Zavien Doombringer]

Mcafee is better with xp than Norton. If you have Norton System utilities, just run those from the disk and not install to the system. Saves on the resources.

It will be better to slick and reinstall. The partition is whacked now. Trust me, I do this for a living.

Freepmail if you have questions. later

[demlosers]

When I started to load SP2, I inadvertently click the terminate button during the upgrade, and as you can imagine it messed my computer up real good but I'm computer savvy, I then did a SP2 uninstall and corrected the numerous software errors as they came along during the reload... I was successful

So don't give up on SP2. Try it again but turn off all those unnecessary processes that run in the background, especially firewalls, virus checkers, spybot-SD resident, ect...

There's always another way with computers systems...like right now I'm being blocked to FR because of a main router being down:

r01-ffm1.treml-sturm.net

Router: r01-ffm1.treml-sturm.net (217.68.0.107)
Location	Current Index	Response Time (ms)	Packet Loss (%)
Germany (Frankfurt)	0	0	100

However, I found another way to get here. :)

[Alouette]

It is not a password issue. I can log in as Administrator, and I have admin priv on my own user account. The problem is that the Administrators group is locked out of essential system functions.

[Alouette]

Just one more question before I reformat.

I'm going to have to start with Win2K Pro, since my version of WinXP is an upgrade. Wipe and reinstall should take all day, but it's better than time lost trying to fix all these problems.

When you install WinXP and Office 2003, M$ forces you to register the product and won't activate an installation on more than one PC. If I do a wipe, how is M$ going to know this is a reinstall? I paid a lot of money for these programs.

[Born Conservative]

I'm going to have to start with Win2K Pro, since my version of WinXP is an upgrade.

I don't think you have to install Win2K Pro first. Start with installing XP; since it is an upgrade, you will get a screen asking to verify that you have a copy of a previous OS. You will then need to put the Win 2K disc in; once it's verified, you can resume installing XP. As for the MS Office issue, I'm not sure about that...

[firewalk]

.