Admin Accounts All Locked Problem

[djoe]

Hello,

I have a laptop with Windows 7 installed on it. This machine is relatively locked down as well. Anyhow, today I was basically in a rush and I remember deleting a user which was no longer working at our company and then I shutdown.

When I started the machine up again I tried to go into the password protected bios to check some configurations and I tried several wrong passwords and gave up. At this point I restarted and waited for Windows 7 to boot up.

Once at the boot menu I tried to log in as always and it said my account was locked? Then I called the other admin into the room and he tried to login and it said his account was locked as well? How could this be?

At this point I am thinking their might have been something configured in the BIOS to locked the account but I do not know as I am not the one who initially configured the machine as this person is now gone.

So currently we are waiting to figure out what the BIOS password is but I dont understand how it could lock all the accounts up?

Perhaps someone here has some advice or tips as there is important data on this machine that we cannot loose.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the forum.

Please edit your profile with all the hardware specs.
Don't think the BIOS blocked a user. I would accept if it blocked the drive, not a user.
As it is a desktop, did you tried to reset the BIOS (like taking the battery out)?

 

[samuria]

Is this logging in on a domain or local?

 

[djoe]

Thank you so much for your help,

I should of wrote down the hardware specs but at the moment do not have access to that information but when I go back to the office I can get it.

The device is a laptop and is not connected to the domain. I also find it strange that the BIOS would lock a user out. The only other thing I can think of is when I went to delete the user that was no longer working at the office somehow the process was never completed and it somehow corrupted the state of the system?

In either case I at this point am pretty confident I can get my hands on the BIOS password and will test it hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday. If it is the BIOS I am thinking if I can log in and cleanly exit maybe it can reset itself.

Anyhow, I will try to get more information within the next 24 hours and again thanks for your help.

Joe

 

[Lance1]

Try booting the PC and access the advanced options "F8" Select Command prompt. Type Net user administrator /active:yes confirm that and reboot and access the PC through that Administrator account. From there you can diagnose the issue. Once your done open an elevated CMD and type Net user administrator /active:no and reboot to access your account.

​

 

[djoe]

Thanks again for your help everyone,

I still have this annoying problem. Lance, I just tried your solution of typing F8, and then booting into Windows Safe Mode with Console however, it does not want to give me a console so I cannot type those commands.

Regarding the actual problem, I did obtain the BIOS password and logged in then exited. So at this point I am assuming typing in the wrong BIOS password did not lock out my accounts.

So, at this point I am thinking what caused this problem was when I went to delete an admin account. Somehow by trying to do this I locked out my other admin accounts so I just need to figure out a way around this. I am hoping someone else has some ideas?

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Megahertz07]

As the computer used to belong to someone that is no longer on the company, my suggestion is to do a Factory Restore. It will format the drive and install am image from another partition. You didn't gave us the hardware specs, but you probably can launch from BIOS.

To use the commands Lance suggested on post #5, you have to boot with Linux, modify a file etc. If you wish to do it, I can guide you on.

 

[djoe]

Hello,

Just as a fallow up I have basically almost completely resolved my problems I had. I took an idea I kind of got from Megahertz07 to basically boot into another OS to unlock my account. To be more exact I used a Live CD called CHWPD to unlock my account. This process works but can take a while to go through everything but I have one last question. Now that I can log in to my admin account is there an easy command or easy steps to unlock the other admin accounts which are stilled locked?

Also, I am still confused why this happened. Is there anything I can read that would allow me to better understand this problem so it does not happen again. How is it that all the admin accounts got locked at the same time?

Anyhow, thanks for everyone's help. Once I get all the other admin accounts unlocked I will mark this POST as solved.

R
Joe

 

[Megahertz07]

Fist of all, it could be a group policy configuration (gpedit.msc) if your win 7 is a pro or ultimate. As you didn't gave us your hardware specs, we can't help you.
Please edit your profile with all the hardware specs.

 

[djoe]

Hey Megahertz07,

The laptop is running Windows 7 Enterprise, the machine is a dell latitude e6400 with 4 Gigs of Ram, dual core intel processor. I believe the machine is likely 2-3 years old. If you need additional information let me know and thanks for your help.

Joe

 

[Megahertz07]

Run gpedit.msc to see if there is any restriction policy enabled.