It came from the company with XP installed and I don't remember setting a password. Oh well, I'm about to give up. The way it is acting, I really think it may be a hardware problem. Often the bios boot screen never appears and then you can't even get into safe mode or the recovery CD. ges
if you can wait until you new drive gets here you can install that and start fresh. then you will know if that is the problem. good luck.
I think that is what I'll have to do. Very many thanks, vhehn, for all your suggestions. I will also call the vendor on Monday, though the machine just went out of it's one year warranty. Wouldn' you know it! ges
I picked up a program called The Ultimate Troubleshooter this afternoon. It has a free limited version (just click the download on the "pay" page). I went ahead with the pay version ($20) which I found useful in cleaning up some of the unnecessary stuff in my Windows XP Pro. It explains in more detail what a lot of the running services are and which ones are safe to disable. http://www.answersthatwork.com/TUT_pages/TUT_more_info.htm I also run Norton System Works which you can find on Ebay for a few bucks. This does a good job of looking for errors in your Windows Registry file. And, one last thing, in Windows go to Start/Run and type in "chkdsk /r" without the quotes then when it asks, type "Y" which will allow it to run at your next boot-up (before windows starts). Then restart your computer. It will take about an hour to do a thorough check of your hard drive.
We had a computer that wouldn't boot up due to a defective DVD/CD-R drive. After disconnecting the that drive, the system booted up fine. You may want to try disconnecting non-essential components of your system and see if you can then boot up. All you really need is your hard disk that contains the c: drive, your keyboard, mouse, video card, and monitor. No need for your floppy, CD-ROM, sound card, modem, network card, or anything else. You can remove or disconnect those components. If your machine boots up fine without them, then you can put them back in one at a time until your machine fails. Then you'll know which is the likely bad component. -- M
Since you use XP Home Edition, try leaving the password field blank and pressing OK or Next to go to the next step. If this doesn't work, call the manufacturer of the computer to see if it was set at the factory.
I tried the blank password and no luck. I'll contact the vendor on Monday. Someone suggested this registry tweak to eliminate the need for the admin password: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole SecurityLevel REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1) I've never messed with the registry. ges
Look at these: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823614&Product=winxp Knowledge Base Article 823614 -OR/AND- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545&Product=winxp Knowlege Base Article 307545 "How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from Starting" --------------------------------------------------- Article 307545 gives you a fairly easy, but intricate method to be able to get back to the desktop, then recover data (not guaranteed of course), then to recover a system restore point and have your computer start up at that recover date. Perhaps this will help you. I am not an expert or anything, but I did have to do this, and was able to recover the data that I needed-then reinstalled xphome. Good luck- box