HUGE problem with Windows XP Pro LOGIN [RESOLVED]
I'm using Windows XP Pro and I'm having trouble with my windows login. Here's the entire history of the problem:
My computer is about a year old now and my main user account name is ‘William’, and is set up as a Computer Administrator account. Back about 8-9 months ago, I was having trouble logging in using the Welcome Screen, where none of the accounts would show up, and I would be unable to log in. At that point I switched to ‘Classic Mode’, like in NT where you type in your name and your password to log in. This was working for a long time, until very recently.
Since I will be going to back to school in 3 weeks and for other reasons, I was trying to change my password and found that Windows was unable to change my password. I tried removing my password (so that I could add a new one), and I got the same message from Windows.
I decided I would try to log in to my ‘Administrator’ account, but I had forgotten the password that I had set, and did not have a password restore disk. So, I decided to create a new account from my main account called ‘Administrator2’ and from that account, I tried changing my password. It was successful, and I logged off and tried to log in as ‘William’ with the changed password, but Windows was telling me that my account was locked and to contact an administrator. So I logged back in to my ‘Administrator2’ account and removed my password.
Upon reattempting to log in as ‘William’ without a password, I received the same message that my account was locked and to contact an administrator. So I logged back in to my ‘Administrator2’ account and created a password for myself. I tried logging in as ‘William’ once more using my new password and it worked perfectly. I then went to the User Accounts page from the Control Panel and then created a password restore disk.
This brings us to this morning, when I tried to log into my account. I had gotten so used to typing in my old password that I forgot about the new one, and I got an error saying that my account had been locked, as I suddenly remembered that I had changed my password. So, attempting to fix this, I logged into my ‘Administrator2’ account to change my password, when I find that on the User Accounts page that my ‘William’ account does not show up at all. I clicked ‘Create a New Account’, typed in ‘William’, and it told me that the account already exists.
So now I’m stuck. The only accounts that show up are the ‘Administrator2’, my brother’s account (which hasn’t been used in almost a year, and is Limited), and the Guest account (which is turned off). I have a password restore disk for my ‘William’ account and I have tried booting from the disk, but the only file on the disk is a file called ‘userkey’, of type ‘Password Backup’ and there are no other files on the disk (not even hidden files).
I have no idea how to get my account back, plus all the files I had in my “C:\Documents and Settings\William” folder are all locked. Is there a simple solution that will make everything better? Are there complicated MS-DOS commands that I have to use? How can I fix this?!?
