Cannot login to XP pro anymore

[au0]

Hi everyone,

My parents called me recently and they said they cannot log in to their computer. I was the one who installed XP pro on their computer(i'd say about a year ago?). It only has a default user and has never been password protected (always enter blank at the login screen). Apparently the computer restarted on its own and went into chkdsk, (the one with the light blue background with the white font and the windows logo somewhere in the corner). I don't know the details about the results for that but after that my parents couldn't log in anymore. It says to check the domain and user name, as well as the password again (it has no domain and the user name is just User1). I've looked online for a solution, and only options I found were some softwares that change the password or have ones that will recover the password upon submission of some data their software obtains with a floppy (loginrecovery.com). They seem sketch to me, does anyone have any ideas how to solve this problem? Thanks.

Au0

 

[rf6647]

Have you tried Safe Mode without networking? Once there, use system restore.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

I've used LoginRecovery in the past to retrieve passwords, worked as advertised.

[edited] - Rick ...is free and it will display the user passwords for you, but if they didn't set one then something is fishy. I'd bet on either data corruption or malware.


Sorry, but too many complaints on this one. - Rick

 

[Rick]

Safe mode will not work under XP Pro (It will work under home, though).

Your best bet is to find a utility to reset your XP password online. They exist and they aren't too hard to find. But I don't think this is your issue. It sounds like data corrupted. Your SAM (Security Accounts Manager) is damaged. There's probably no way to recover it if chkdsk can't fix the issue, except system restore. You can't use system restore withouth access to Windows, but you can copy files manually from the C:\System Volume Information folder.

You can follow these these instructions. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545