Vista - Administrator password causes hang

I have a Dell desktop, the model etc I don't think are relevant to my issue. Vista home premium ran well for about a year until recently.

I have two accounts set up on the pc, one is a standard user and the other is the one I use as administrator and I now realise foolishly used as my own account.

The issue is that when I try to log onto the account that is the admin account the pc simply hangs. I left this for a good few hours just in case it sorted itself out, it never did, I had to hard reset.

I can log into the non admin account without any problems.

When I look at the users the non admins account shows as having about 250 Mb of data whereas the admin account shows 0 Mb, although there is certainly data there.

I have activated the Vista admin account through the Cmd prompt but this account does not show up on the start up screen so I do not know where to look for it.

I am not able to reset to factory setting because I am asked for the admin password and as soon as I enter it the PC hangs for eternity.

I have even gone to the lengths of taking out the hard disc and decanting the data I wanted from it.

Is the only option to format the hard drives of the pc and re-install the operating system? I do have the system CDs but invariably I find if you do re-install there are always issues with drivers etc.

Grateful for any help.

Mick D

If you tap F8 at startup, and go into Safe Mode, do you get the option to log
in with the Admin account?
--
Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia


"Mick D" wrote:

Hi Mick, thanks for getting back to me on this one.

I don't get the option to log on with the admin account.

I get options for start normally, safe mode, safe mode with network connections and one other which I can't remember off the top of my head because the pc is at home and I am at work. I will take a look tonight and furnish you with that detail soonest.

Once again many thanks for taking the time to look at this for me.

Mick D

Turned PC on to look at the safe boot options and lo and behold got a totally different safe boot option which did allow me to log on as administrator and subsequently restore my pc.

No idea why this particular safe boot option was not showing the 30 times before but it is now working.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????

Thanks to Mick for looking into this for me.

I'm kinda havin the same problem but EVERYTHING I try requires the admin password which it is NOT accepting........... I can't even get into SAFE MODE