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General discussion

How to get on admin. acc from a guest

Jan 27, 2011 12:20AM PST

i have windows media center edition. ive literally tried everyway possible to gain access to my admin account. i have forgot my password to it. and now i only can access the guest account. i cannot download anything and retrieve my files on my admin. acc. can someone help me out with this problem!
Thanks

Discussion is locked

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It Depends..
Jan 27, 2011 4:43AM PST

Unfortunately, you didn't tell us the operating system you're using.. Still, since most "media center edition" statements refer to Windows XP, I'll proceed as if that's the case.

Whenever setting up a new computer, one should create at least TWO separate accounts which have admin rights. If you haven't done such, you can always check to see if there is a "hidden" administrator account like this:

Restart the computer into Safe Mode and hopefully, you have the option to log in as the hidden administrator.. If the traditional login window loads, then you'll need to type in "administrator" into the "username" line, then leave the "password" line empty and press the "Enter" key. (If you've got the Welcome Screen enabled, simply click on the "adminstrator" logon icon, then leave the password line empty and press the "Enter" key.) As long as you've not created a password for such, then the computer will boot to the hidden adminstrator and you can then change your normal user account's password from the Control Panel-User Accounts section.

If you don't find the hidden administrator login on you computer, then you'll need to use a program such as the one below to get it done.

NT Password
http://www.pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Thanks for the help...
Jan 27, 2011 8:43AM PST

I tried putting it into safe mode but all it did was bring up a bunch of codes which didn't do anything. A
nd I don't believe I have two separate accounts. I've also tried the system32 trick. When u trick the computer into thinking the guest account is an administrator account. Idk what else to do. I don't know if I wanna try to downlaod that link you sent me because it said as one of it's risks to is that it might lose ur data in the computer which I have a lot of data in there that I need to extract

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If you need to save your data ...
Jan 28, 2011 4:10AM PST

you should be making daily backups of the data.

In your circumstances where the drive is still acessible you should download a Linux Live Cd ISO and make yourself a bootable Linux CD with which you can locate and save those data files. Ubuntu is a good choice.

ANYTHING you do on the computer will risk your data BUT the risk that link refers to is if you are using XDP's built in file or drive encryption. If not risk is small.

If you can log on to the guest account you should be able to access Safe Mode from which you could use the built in ADMINISTRATOR account.

Try this:
Shut down the computer.
Re-start the computer and start pressing the F8 key one or two times a second until you get the Advanced Options menu.