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Admin account disabled completely.
I've had a lot of trouble trying to fix my 3 year old PC. I recently set it up to my parents TV so they can watch DVD's and browse the internet. I wanted to disable the need for a password to log in and found a method of skipping the log in screen. Inside user accounts I un-ticked "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". (start, "netplwiz" to access).
Unfortunately after a restart, the account that had been set up as an administrator had been converted to a guest account (No idea why this would happen?!). The hidden admin account in windows 7 is also disabled and can not be accessed (in safe mode or command prompt) at all to re-enable the other user's admin status. I can not start anything in elevated status or install any new applications at all as there are no admins! Trying to activate the admin account in command prompt comes up with:
"System Error 5 has occurred, Access is denied"
The system is running on windows 7 home premium 32bit. UAC was turned down to the lowest setting in the interface, but I can not access the setting at all now! I was just about to set up a system recovery as the pc was setup exactly as I wanted it, so there's no way to do a system restore either! I've exhausted all the possible solutions I could find, which just keeps leading to more problems which ends up in an infinite loop which is unfixable!
Oh, I was also using logmein at the time to do remote desktop in case my parents need any help in the future. One other thing to note is that within the netplwiz window, there are 2 administrators stated. One is Mcx1 and the other is LogMeInRemoteUser which are both in the groups HomeUsers and administrators. All other user accounts are only in the HomeUsers group. To add even more confusion I can't even add a new standard user from the user account controls!
edit: I booted up my pc whilst holding F8. Started the system repair from the menu and managed to log into the administrator logmein account! Accessed the commandline from there with an elevated status but no use. I've attempted a solution found here but the file was already in use so I could not get past the Target SAM step! http://www.vistax64.com/vista-accoun...r-account.html
Anything else I could try before I go and do a reinstall of windows 7?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
Last edited by Amoo; 04 Jun 2011 at 10:58. Reason: added extra info