Looking for help with xp

mooman_00

Hi, yesterday at work i tried to hook someones laptop up to our network. I made a balls of it as when i set up an account for him to log onto the network with i set it to administrator.

This got rid of the default administrator account that he used for months and all his settings. I managed to get all his favourites/shortcuts etc back from the administrator folder in the documents folder.

Problem is its still not right and he wants to go back to the original administrator account. This is the problem xp will not let me go back. You cant delete an administrator account without first creating another admin account, i dont want a new one i want to go back to the default one.

Ive booted up in safe mode and was able to logon to the original admin account that he used. This is the account he wants so i tried to delete the new account. Xp wont let me not even from the original admin acc.

I was thinking of rolling back to the last working settings but i was wondering how far back does that take you? I dont want to destroy all the work he has done in the last few days.

Any help would be appreciated......cheers,
John.

mooman_00

update:
The main problem was with his diary/calendar on outlook but i managed to copy the files across from the administrator folder. So for the moment its ok although now he has lost at least 2 days+ work(or so he tells me) thats what you get for asking a student to do a job.

Xp is a balls to get used to.

Cake Fiend

Originally posted by mooman_00
now he has lost at least 2 days+ work(or so he tells me) blah blah...

Tell him to piss off, I hate people who try to pass off their own idiocy and incompetence as other people's mistakes. If he a) knew jack about his own computer and b) had been careful enough with important documents (backups etc) then you changing his account wouldn't have set him back at all. Ungrateful wanker shouldn't even have been using the administrator account as his default login in the first place.

Capt'n Midnight

Local Admin or Domain Admin - the other may be there..

But if you delete the account you loose the SID - did you remove the profile as well ....

If you have to setup a user with Admin rights - then add them to the local admin group.

Why not update the AutoLogon settings for further user convienence !

Files n' stuff should be under Documents & settins \luser name
(hate the way they keep moving the place where files are stored by default ....

milltown

System restore (in XP at least) will not delete any documents or data, just turns back drivers and settings. When you open system restore it will present you with a calender where you can click on a date, it will tell you if there is a restore point saved for that date and what was changed on that date.
Go in and have a look, you can always stop short of actually doing the restore.

mooman_00

Originally posted by Sico
Tell him to piss off, I hate people who try to pass off their own idiocy and incompetence as other people's mistakes. If he a) knew jack about his own computer and b) had been careful enough with important documents (backups etc) then you changing his account wouldn't have set him back at all. Ungrateful wanker shouldn't even have been using the administrator account as his default login in the first place.

agreed but i managed to swindle him, changed his new account to Administrator. and gave him the same password as before. The full stop after the name means its a different account to the local admin one. I told him it was his fault that the files were lost as he should have told me that he had new work on the new profile before he asked me to remove it. Thruth is i destroyed the files when i replaced them with the older versions i got off the Documents & settins \Administrator account so its his tough shiit.

Capt'n Midnight - The problem was that i/he didn't want any user accounts on his machine bar the default one that xp starts you off on. Once you create a new admin/user account you cant delete that account and go back to the default one as xp keeps that for emergency work as you can only access it in safe mode. The problem began, as sico said, when he didn't set up a user account when he originally got his machine.

Milltown - I figured that you had to set rollback dates for rolling back, i didn't think that xp automaticly does it. When you say it only rolls back drivers and settings does that mean if you delete files that you can't roll back and they'll be there?

Cheers guy's for your help

sceptre

Originally posted by Sico
Ungrateful wanker shouldn't even have been using the administrator account as his default login in the first place.

That's certainly true. All those warnings AND they make it easy to set up an account with admin privileges (even making all new accounts at first setup admin by default (which I reckon is a bad idea but there you go))

milltown

No Moonman, it's not an undelete feature. Have a look at it next time you're on an XP machine and you'll see the sort of stuff it restores. I think I read somewhere that it gobbles up a lot of hdd space if a lot of changes are made and a lot of restore points set.