During the first week in October I was house sitting for my mom. I set up a user account on her Vista laptop so that I could log in and use her printer without having to install the drivers on my machine (XP laptop). Everything was working fine.
Now, a month later, she tells me that she can't log in to her account (the 'Owner' account) and I hear from my brother-in-law that I 'deleted' my mom's computer. See, she can't get to her pix, etc. from my log in, and without the shortcuts she had on her Desktop she's helpless. (Mom, god bless her, is anything but a power user--she thinks MSN.com is her browser & that she is logging on to her home computer when she checks her online email from work.) She does say that everything was OK for awhile, but now her account doesn't work.
Naturally she's panicking, so I brought her computer home to see what I could do. Using my account I logged in verified that her pix & documents are still there. Following tips from the Web I:
1. ...downloaded a program to crack the passwords. It confirmed that she had set no password on her account, but it couldn't get the password on mine.
2. ...disabled & re-enabled the User Account Control. This allows me to log on to her account & delete my account.
-BUT-
Her account doesn't look like it used to:
* Her pix & docs are in c:\Users\Owners\Pictures and c:\Users\Owners\Documents, but they don't show up in the 'Pictures' or 'Documents' folders for her account
* Her wallpaper doesn't come up (picture of her cat)
* Her desktop doesn't come up with those shortcuts she relies on.
Please tell me there's an easy way to bring back her account & save me from being blamed for 'deleting her computer'. The alternative would be to sit down with her and try to rebuild the whole thing, but remember she doesn't know the difference between her computer and the Internet. We got into a shouting match just trying to get her to tell me the name of her bank so I could show her that the Internet is still there & she can still bank online. I know that she's scared of the computer and scared of losing all of her data, and I'm trying to be patient, but when she's this clueless about her computer she won't be much help in setting things back up.
Help me Obi-Wan. I don't want to keep being the bad son that (she thinks) ruined her computer.
Now, a month later, she tells me that she can't log in to her account (the 'Owner' account) and I hear from my brother-in-law that I 'deleted' my mom's computer. See, she can't get to her pix, etc. from my log in, and without the shortcuts she had on her Desktop she's helpless. (Mom, god bless her, is anything but a power user--she thinks MSN.com is her browser & that she is logging on to her home computer when she checks her online email from work.) She does say that everything was OK for awhile, but now her account doesn't work.
Naturally she's panicking, so I brought her computer home to see what I could do. Using my account I logged in verified that her pix & documents are still there. Following tips from the Web I:
1. ...downloaded a program to crack the passwords. It confirmed that she had set no password on her account, but it couldn't get the password on mine.
2. ...disabled & re-enabled the User Account Control. This allows me to log on to her account & delete my account.
-BUT-
Her account doesn't look like it used to:
* Her pix & docs are in c:\Users\Owners\Pictures and c:\Users\Owners\Documents, but they don't show up in the 'Pictures' or 'Documents' folders for her account
* Her wallpaper doesn't come up (picture of her cat)
* Her desktop doesn't come up with those shortcuts she relies on.
Please tell me there's an easy way to bring back her account & save me from being blamed for 'deleting her computer'. The alternative would be to sit down with her and try to rebuild the whole thing, but remember she doesn't know the difference between her computer and the Internet. We got into a shouting match just trying to get her to tell me the name of her bank so I could show her that the Internet is still there & she can still bank online. I know that she's scared of the computer and scared of losing all of her data, and I'm trying to be patient, but when she's this clueless about her computer she won't be much help in setting things back up.
Help me Obi-Wan. I don't want to keep being the bad son that (she thinks) ruined her computer.
