wrote in message
news:1107057167.290985.208690@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
> Hi,
>
> Tonight when I started my laptop (windows XP home edition), I simply
> can not login using my original password. I do not know what the hell
> is going on. All my research stuff is on the machine and I am also
> becoming cazy.
>
> The only thing I can remember is that recently I frequenctly got "error
> writing disk" information when I save files to my computer. Does that
> mean that someting wrong with my hardisk?
>
> Any suggestion on how to log in the computer?
> Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This seems to be a case of living right at the edge, in two regards:
- When you bought your last car, you made sure you had at least
two sets of keys, just in case. By the same token, one always
sets up two admin accounts on a WinXP PC, just in case. It's
the same line of thought.
- The iron rule of computing says that all important files must
be backed up to an independent medium once a week. Many
people chose to ignore this rule until they suffer a major
disaster.

You proably get away lightly. Getting files off a locked WinXP
PC is not too hard, and the admin password can be reset with
a floppy boot disk downloaded from here:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I have tried your method you suggest, but when
the utility try to find the information in the registry, it just says

"Can not find usernames in registry (is this a SAM-hive?)".

Does that mean that all my users names and related passwords are
removed from the registry by some hack program? Is there a way to get
around this?

Thanks!

wrote in message
news:1107137148.493624.164210@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I have tried your method you suggest, but when
> the utility try to find the information in the registry, it just says
>
> "Can not find usernames in registry (is this a SAM-hive?)".
>
> Does that mean that all my users names and related passwords are
> removed from the registry by some hack program? Is there a way to get
> around this?
>
> Thanks!
>

Yes, user names and passwords are kept in the SAM hive.
It's usally located in c:\windows\system32\config\sam.

There are a few ways of getting out of your predicament:

- In the unlikely case that your disk uses the FAT32 file
system, you can boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk
from www.bootdisk.com.

- You can buy a $10.00 adapter that lets you connect your
laptop disk to a desktop, as a slave disk. There is a risk of
you connecting the disk to the cable back to front, in which
case you lose the disk permanently.

- You can boot the laptop with a Bart PE boot CD.
(www.bootdisk.com). To make the CD, you need a
WinXP Professional CD (but no licence key!) and a
CD burner. This disk has saved my backside plenty
of times!

In each of these cases you need to navigate to the folder
where the SAM resides, then rename it (e.g. to sam.bad).
When you next log on, you will have exactly one account,
administrator, with a blank password. Your old profile folders
will still be there but you will have to copy things manually
into your newly created profile folders.