I'm new here, so pardon my inexperience. I have Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. I set myself up as the Administrator and password protected it. I set up the other people in the house set up their own profiles with usernames and passwords.

I decided that I didn't want anyone else getting on my computer, so I went in as administrator and changed everyone's passwords so no one could log in. (I didn't want to be so extreme as to delete everyone's accounts.) I also made sure everyone's settings were "limited."

Well, a particular person in the house got in anyway. Being a jerk, he didn't change my password but he changed my account type to "limited" and I couldn't do anything about it until he changed it back for me.

How is he doing this? I am very pissed off about it and he knows it but he laughs in my face like he can do it anyway.

I researched a bit and read about entering through safe mode, although when I tried it myself, I could only figure out how to go to "recovery," which it looked like I didn't want to do.

I read about hitting ctrl, alt, delete twice to check for an administrator password, which wasn't default, so I don't know how he's done this.

He didn't have the password, he only had limited account access even if he did get logged in, but somehow he gained administrator access to change mine.

Can anyone help me figure out how to keep him out? At this point, even if I delete his account, he obviously can get in.

I already know all the Windows and Microsoft haters will talk about how insecure XP is, but I don't need a bunch of people telling me I've got a sucky operating system, please.

All help will be appreciated.

I bet he knows your personal password, try changing yours to something else, make sure they are not set as an administrator and see if they can still get "in"

If he can still get in after doing what Keith said, change the boot options in the bios to boot from the hard drive only. He could have put a program on cd to boot to which will let him in.

Yep, that IS a way around admin passwords, booting from a CD with a specific program on it.

You could also set a password at the BIOS level.

Here's the program, in case you're interested in knowing. It's NOT for the rookie computer user by any means, but this thing has saved a client on more than one occasion when they didn't know their admin password.

It doesn't work on Active Directory, however, so one trick you may want to try is to get a server edition of Windows and set it up as a domain server.

Originally Posted by mgraphic

I bet he knows your personal password, try changing yours to something else, make sure they are not set as an administrator and see if they can still get "in"

That doesn't really make sense. If he changed her user type from administrative to unprivileged and then back, that could only be done from or by a differnet user account.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

That doesn't really make sense. If he changed her user type from administrative to unprivileged and then back, that could only be done from or by a differnet user account.

Right. All the other accounts had passwords I had set and none of them had administrator access. But somehow he got on, changed his password, changed his account from limited to administrator, and then changed my administrator account to limited.

When I got pissed at him, he logged into his account and then changed mine back. He won't tell me how he did that.

How do I set a password at the bios level or change the boot at bios level?

And I'm pretty sure he didn't bother with booting from a CD.

Oh, and if it makes a difference, the computer is never completely turned off. Whenever someone is done with their session, they just log out and the main welcome screen is always on. Somehow, from there, I think he's getting in.

How do I set a password at the bios level or change the boot at bios level?

And I'm pretty sure he didn't bother with booting from a CD.

If he's that good, the CD is actually his easiest option because he doesn't have to guess at anything.

Setting a password/changing a boot order at the bios level depends on the bios of your motherboard. Chances are it's either Award BIOS or AMI BIOS. If you want to know for sure, reboot your machine and when the POST test comes up (that's the black screen that tells you your processor, RAM, etc.) then you'll see a logo or information about your BIOS.

The bios password only challenges you when you turn the computer on ... so if you don't turn it off, that's not going to help. Also, in desperation, you can get past a bios password by pulling the power and battery, and waiting about 12 hours.

I don't know Windows well enough to say how he might be doing it, and I don't use XP much anymore. But I wonder if his user account is a member of a group other than administrators that's given permission to wreck things? This looks interesting:

A member of the Power Users group may be able to gain administrator rights and permissions in Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Windows XP

Okay, the bios boot screen had been disabled in the setup area, but I figured out how to add a password for both administrative and user at the bios level. I've also deleted his account entirely, after saving his documents in my user profile.

What else can I do to try to keep him out? I really doubt he's taken the time to get a boot disc. He hates Windows and uses Linux on his own computer, he just likes to f*** with mine.

Originally Posted by joder

If he can still get in after doing what Keith said, change the boot options in the bios to boot from the hard drive only. He could have put a program on cd to boot to which will let him in.

I don't want to accidentally screw anything up, so how do I change the options to boot from the hard drive only? I've got Award bios on my computer. And does that mean I'd have to power down the computer each time I was finished using the computer? (I'd really hate to have to do that, but I guess I will if I need to.)

To change to not boot from CD, at boot hold down the key to get into the BIOS (sometimes F8). There is an option in there to set where the computer boots from. No you don't have to power it down each time.

If he's using Linux, that may be where he is getting in. With Linux he can't mount the hard drive with Samba and make all kinds of changes. He can even set up Linux as an Windows server. It's good you deleted his account. That's how he would have gotten in this way but I would also recommend installing a firewall.

There is another way by which one logins into guest account and runs cmd and by putting several commands the password can be reset and the old password is put to backup file.After he finishes using the computer he is able to restore the old password from the backup file

Actually, the easiest way to bypass a computers login is to boot in safe mode. Once that happens, you can automatically log in as an administrator. Then, you can do anything you want. I do this quite often when I am working on a computer. Usually the user is not home so I just boot into safe more, and once I am logged in, I create a new admin account and restart. This lets me log in as myself while I am working on the computer.

An interesting article on the subject
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/wi...windows/?p=639

My favorite tool for resetting passwords for Windows is Offline NT Password and registry editor found at
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

The best part of this tool is you forget your password or accidentally change it to something you can not remember you can just set the password to blank to get access back to the machine.

I'm not sure... but I think you can do this by going into safe mode and changing the settings. He shouldn't have been able to change an admins access, but he would have been able to make his an administrators.

What about using Ophcrack?

Lifehacker has a great article (complete with screenshots) on how you do it.