Vista Tutorial - Accidentally Removed Administrator Account

Hopefully this is in the right forum, I don't know much about computers. Anyways, I have a Dell running Vista Buisness 32 bit that was issued to me by the Navy. I'm out of the military now and wanted to change around some of the user settings (some kinda annoying DoD login stuff) but unfortunately managed to do something dumb. Rather than just modifying the login screen which I meant to do, I think I removed the administrator user account.

Before, whenever I wanted to change anything about the computer or install something, etc, I would get a little message asking "Are you sure?" and then asking for permission. I would just click okay and it'd work.


Now, though, when I go to change something (like trying to do a "System Restore" after my mistake) it comes up with that same permission box, but is asking for a user name and a password that I don't have/didn't set up. I don't know if this is because I totally wiped out administrator controls or it's asking for the infor our IT folk put into it before (if they did leave themselves an entrance account I can't get the info for it)

All the changes I made were through the control panel, user accounts interface.

Any help or advice you guys could give me would be very much appreciated, the OS still works overall but I can't install anything new, or download anything, or even use some programs/processes already installed.

And yes, I know I'm an idiot

It would appear that for some reason, you are no longer an administrator on your computer.
How many accounts are on your computer?

Well, I can't get into them through the User Accounts section of Control Panel without permission, but in my Windows folder on C:/ under Users I can see 4: Default, m121038 (the one I use), Maintenance, and Public. I don't know how to access anything other than the second one.

You might try going into Safe Mode ( tap F8 after the Bios screen and before Vista starts loading )

See if you can create a new administrator account from there

User Account - Create

Or you might try this

http://www.pcloginnow.com/

SIW2

First option didn't work, it turns out that it gives me a UAC prompt asking if I want to continue when I try to open the elevated command prompt, which without an administrator account I can't do.

Working on the second option now, hopefully I can install it without a popup.

Thanks!

I have done the exact same thing and can't find any way to fix things. I would love some assistance!