How to Re-Enable a User Account (WinXP or VISTA)
Wow I was glad to have come across this site earlier today. The Windows XP computer I use has been down for a couple of days until I could get around to fixing it this afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I attempted to log on to WinXP and all my user-names were gone. And even when I tried to boot into Safe Mode the User-Names that should be listed there would still empty.
Just goes to show you that even after using computer for sixteen years there are still a few relatively obvious things that one can miss and still be there to learn. Humility is helpful in life (but more helpful in light of more permanent things like eternity). I roll my eyes (at myself) when considering the differences between Windows XP Pro and XP Home. Apparently in Home when you boot into safe mode you have to press CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice in order to bypass the friendly login screen and get to a place you can type the "Administrator" user-name and password.
And once I was in SafeMode there was this really cool trick to get to an Administrative Command Prompt. You simply go to Start and Run (like usual), type CMD there. But then 'before' you press ENTER you hold down the CTRL+SHIFT keys and 'then' press Enter. That got me to an administrative command prompt where I could reenable my primary Administrative Username. For the sake of example we can call it TGott.
In order to do that I typed the following at the 'admistrative' command prompt. What's in blue below is the actual command typed, and the black area is where I typed "TGott" as the USERNAME and "h3ll0!@#" as the password that I use (in this example).
Net user USERNAME password /active:yes
Once I had re-enabled my primary account I could boot into XP and go about re-enabling the other accounts on the system. And yes I could have fixed everything in less than ten minutes by "blowing it all away" with the image that I had created according to my last "Windows Maintenance" post, but I would have lost several hours of work that I had done in configuring my Windows XP desktop and all of the programs that I had installed on it. Still, much less than I would have lost if I did not have that Parted Magic image :-)
Just goes to show you that even after using computer for sixteen years there are still a few relatively obvious things that one can miss and still be there to learn. Humility is helpful in life (but more helpful in light of more permanent things like eternity). I roll my eyes (at myself) when considering the differences between Windows XP Pro and XP Home. Apparently in Home when you boot into safe mode you have to press CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice in order to bypass the friendly login screen and get to a place you can type the "Administrator" user-name and password.
And once I was in SafeMode there was this really cool trick to get to an Administrative Command Prompt. You simply go to Start and Run (like usual), type CMD there. But then 'before' you press ENTER you hold down the CTRL+SHIFT keys and 'then' press Enter. That got me to an administrative command prompt where I could reenable my primary Administrative Username. For the sake of example we can call it TGott.
In order to do that I typed the following at the 'admistrative' command prompt. What's in blue below is the actual command typed, and the black area is where I typed "TGott" as the USERNAME and "h3ll0!@#" as the password that I use (in this example).
Net user USERNAME password /active:yes
Once I had re-enabled my primary account I could boot into XP and go about re-enabling the other accounts on the system. And yes I could have fixed everything in less than ten minutes by "blowing it all away" with the image that I had created according to my last "Windows Maintenance" post, but I would have lost several hours of work that I had done in configuring my Windows XP desktop and all of the programs that I had installed on it. Still, much less than I would have lost if I did not have that Parted Magic image :-)
Labels: Tim Talks, Tip of the Week
posted by Timothy at 2/08/2010 03:50:00 PM
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