Okay part 1:
My friend called me up and asked me to look into his computer problem. Upon booting a Windows 2000 OS, it gets through both of the initial bootup screens (the text-based one and the graphical one) but shortly after it gets to the blue/green GUI screen it crashes and reboots. I attempted Safe Mode, and Last Known Good, and it didn't work. I tried all the repair options on the ERD. I tried going into the Recovery Console and when I pressed Enter for the blank Administrator password, it told me I had the wrong password. I tried a few common passwords and none of them worked.
I then booted from a Linux-based NT admin password changer (which has always worked before on other systems) and it indicated that the Administrator password was, as I suspected, blank. I put in a new password using that same utility, and it didn't work either.
So, it would seem that somehow, either by virus or h4xx or some other unknown cause, user account information is corrupted. That would explain the crash/reboot at the point in the boot process where the login screen should appear.
Any ideas on how to repair corrupt user accounts on a Win2K system?
My friend called me up and asked me to look into his computer problem. Upon booting a Windows 2000 OS, it gets through both of the initial bootup screens (the text-based one and the graphical one) but shortly after it gets to the blue/green GUI screen it crashes and reboots. I attempted Safe Mode, and Last Known Good, and it didn't work. I tried all the repair options on the ERD. I tried going into the Recovery Console and when I pressed Enter for the blank Administrator password, it told me I had the wrong password. I tried a few common passwords and none of them worked.
I then booted from a Linux-based NT admin password changer (which has always worked before on other systems) and it indicated that the Administrator password was, as I suspected, blank. I put in a new password using that same utility, and it didn't work either.
So, it would seem that somehow, either by virus or h4xx or some other unknown cause, user account information is corrupted. That would explain the crash/reboot at the point in the boot process where the login screen should appear.
Any ideas on how to repair corrupt user accounts on a Win2K system?