Windows administrator account locked

[Deleted User]

I'm trying to sort out a problem on my sister's PC and I am hoping for a bit of advice. It would appear that her windows account (also the administrator) is locked - her son and daughter's accounts seem OK; they're both able to key in their respective P/W and they get their desktops, but when she keys in her P/W for her account, nothing else happens - she tells me her PC just hangs up. Can anyone please give me some advice as to what may be the cause and how to sort it. For instance, can I delete her account and set up another admin account?

scheming_gypsy

do the son and daughter have admin accounts or just user accounts? if they have admin accounts they'll be able to go into control panel > users > and unlock / reset your sisters account.


actually... if the PC hangs then it's not a account locked issue; it's more than likely she's got a load of !!!!! in her profile that's taking a long time to load. She'll either need to just leave it to see if it loads, or if the kids have admin rights they can go into users (if windows 7) or documents and settings (if XP or Vista) and rename her folder. When she next logs on it'll create a new profile and she can copy her important stuff over from the old one.

[Deleted User]

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

do the son and daughter have admin accounts or just user accounts? if they have admin accounts they'll be able to go into control panel > users > and unlock / reset your sisters account.


actually... if the PC hangs then it's not a account locked issue; it's more than likely she's got a load of !!!!! in her profile that's taking a long time to load. She'll either need to just leave it to see if it loads, or if the kids have admin rights they can go into users (if windows 7) or documents and settings (if XP or Vista) and rename her folder. When she next logs on it'll create a new profile and she can copy her important stuff over from the old one.

Her children's accounts are just user accounts, but can I set up another admin account to sort it out. She has Virgin IS and I want to set up Windows security essential

scheming_gypsy

without an admin account you can't create a new admin account, otherwise it defeats the object of having them.

I'm going to have a random guess and say she's got a stupidly large profile.. Tell her to just turn it on, log in and leave it while she makes tea or goes shopping etc. I've seen machines take 45 minutes plus to log on where it does look like it's hanging.

mj12_2

Just a heads up - you can't copy some files straight from a user account to another user account because of NTFS security permission settings, to make some files in the old account accessible to the new account you have to reset the security permissions.

That won't be an issue if you can get the old account working, but if you have to create a new one and copy the files over if you keep getting 'Access Denied' or 'File Locked' or something along those lines errors when you try and copy the files over that will be why :-).

[Deleted User]

Thanks for your reply. I'll try your suggestion and see what happens.

[Deleted User]

there are ways you can unlock the admin account is it xp? , theres a program called nt password recovery which features on hirens boot disk (alternativly you can download it and make your own).
basically it will let you unlock and reset user accounts. at my former employer we used it alot, they disabled local admin accounts to pretect against certain virus attacks, but then also they set machines that didnt logon within 3 months to be removed from the domain, so essentially you couldnt get onto the machine. great software (altough it does highlight just how easy it is to get a password from windows "secure database".) if i recall it does work with windows vista and 7 as well, but its made really for NT based operating systems (NT, 98, 2000, xp,etc)

[Deleted User]

mj12 wrote: »

Just a heads up - you can't copy some files straight from a user account to another user account because of NTFS security permission settings, to make some files in the old account accessible to the new account you have to reset the security permissions.

That won't be an issue if you can get the old account working, but if you have to create a new one and copy the files over if you keep getting 'Access Denied' or 'File Locked' or something along those lines errors when you try and copy the files over that will be why :-).

also if you use a live boot cd (again hirens has mini xp and a linux live version on it) you can copy the files from user account to user account (bar stuff like ntuser.dat because that would make it go fubar!)