windows xp recovery console, whats the password?

[lexsis]

once again, windows XP has become ****ed and I have to reinstall it again but I dont want to.

I try to use the repair option in recovery console but the funy thing is that it asks for the administrator password; well, there aint no damn admin password. even if i use the password for my user account, it gives error message as wrong password.

I called the microsoft-monkies tech support team and get of course I get a different answer from each support rep about this.

any suggestions?

[PersianImmortal]

If you have no password for the administrator, just press return at the password field. If however your windows has been screwed up through errors, overclocking or a drive fault (e.g bad sectors) then NTFS may have messed up your security and no password will work. This happened to me recently when I got an NTFS error and I had to do a full reformat and reinstall.

[lexsis]

yeah when I press enter at the password field it still prompts for password, dont know why it does that though.

[asklepios]

if u r sure that u don't have a password for your admin account (we are talking about the main admin account here...not a profile with admin rights) and recovery console is not taking blank as a password then most probably your NTFS security descriptors have been corrupted and i don't think you have any other option but to format and re-install.

[The__tweaker]

most probably your NTFS security descriptors have been corrupted and i don't think you have any other option but to format and re-install.

A reformat!? :eek:

So in other words NTFS is extremely risky to use with valuable data that haven't been secured on a cd/floppy etc..:?:

If things get screwed up then ya might not be able to recover your most precious files!?
Is that correct? : omg:

EVEN without ever been using any form of password on your op??
:barf:

[PersianImmortal]

I have often tried to explain the benefits of NTFS, for example "Which file system is better - NTFS or FAT32?" on this page.

To me, they far outweigh the risks of losing data, even though it has happened to me. To be fair, it happened to me because my CPU (P41.7) started dying and eventually corrupted most of my hard drive - but I had backups of my important info to fall back on :)

Basically if you do any "extreme" overclocking, or overclock with bad components (e.g. poor or low speed RAM), or your hardware is just plain faulty then you risk data corruption. If that data happens to be the security information for NTFS then you are effectively locked out of your hard drive.

It's your choice in the end. The security and general stability of NTFS is worth it IMHO. If you keep backups then you should be OK.

[vfoong]

If things get screwed up then ya might not be able to recover your most precious files!?
Is that correct? : omg:

EVEN without ever been using any form of password on your op??
:barf:

Well, if you have another drive on FAT32 or on any other file system readable in DOS, you could use NTFSPro to copy all your valuable files off the NTFS partition onto the FAT32 partition... It's not as if you'll totally lose everything :)

[asklepios]

in any case if they are MOST PRECIOUS then you won't be living without back ups. isn't it? :)

[lexsis]

I do back-ups on a regular basis so restoring data is no problem, what I was wanting to do is find a way to restore windows when it becomes corrupted (without having to format/re-install)

the repair option does work but not if I choose repair from the recovery console.

I used symantec ghost 2003 to make an image of the partition that had win xp on it, but when I went to restore from it, I had 3 problems;
1. error during decompression; so that was like really dumb.
2. I wanted to ghost a partition, not the entire drive.
3. xp wouldnt restart after trying to restore from the ghost image so I eventually had to resintall it again anyway.

there's got to be an easy and 100% reliable way to back up windows xp and restore it rather than having to reinstall it.

also, Ive noticed that my system restore option sucks big time, I created a restore point yet when I went to restore from that point, it was gone, whats up with that?

[vfoong]

Do you use disk cleanup often? Coz there's an option in cleanup where you can tell it to delete all restore points except the previous one so that might have deleted your restore point...

[lexsis]

Do you use disk cleanup often? Coz there's an option in cleanup where you can tell it to delete all restore points except the previous one so that might have deleted your restore point...

I think thats exactly what I was doing.....see what happens when you dont read all the options !!!

[lexsis]

here's some info that might help others in the future;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q308402