Home Network Only - No Administrator Rights

[tearsmith]

I will start by saying that I am in total support of ethical standards on this website... I end by saying that I need help in a "grey" area.

I have 5 computers at HOME. 4 are networked together now thanks to do-it-yourself books and Network wizards. One problem, my daughters computer won't cooperate with anything I try to do because it says that I do not have administrative rights. I've tried everything....

Called Microsoft...no luck...
Tried Administrator with blank password...no luck...
Tried all of our user names and passwords past, present and future...no luck...
Tried to scrap it all and reinstall Win 2K with CD...no right to do that...
Used Start/Run/lusrmgr.msc...accessed administrator group...tried to add user..."access denied"...
Cursed alot...banged my head a few times...still nothing...

I know that there are supposed to be programs on the internet to access lost passwords, but friends warned major spyware or even hacking problems doing this...

What can I do... I don't care if I lose everything on the PC, it's an old one and nothing of importance that can't be reinstalled...can I scrap it? If so, how do I do that?

I swear on my life I am a stay at home mom just trying to get all my 3 daughters on their own computer, so the fight for the internet can cease...

Please help. Thanks.

 

[tearsmith]

Additional info...

I have seen everywhere advice like.."boot from a Win 2K boot disk..." "boot from the Win 2K disk, reformat the C: drive, reinstall Win 2K..." "create a boot disk"...

What does that mean? I have the original of my Windows 2K software with the key. Do I use that? If not, I saw a site that had a Win 2K Pro boot disk download. Do I use that? If so, what is it and how do I use it?

I need a solution, but please spell it out, so much of what I'm reading is zooming over my head.

Thank you very much.

 

[tearsmith]

Follow-Up....

I'M IN!!!

I hope that this might help someone else. I was waiting for a reply and decided to fiddle with it some more myself. Here's what worked...

Log on as a user without admin rights or bypass logon to arrive at desktop...
Select START, RUN, lusrmgr.msc
(A list of USER and GROUPS will be displayed)
Double click on GROUPS and select Administrators. It won't give the password here, but it will tell you the user name of the administrator.
Go to restart...
Use the administrator name given in GROUPS and...here's the key...the password is automatically set at install to the password of the user at the time of the install. For me, it was my daughter's password. Once I entered that, with the name of the user given in GROUPS, it opened right up, prompted for a password change, and off we went...

This won't work obviously if you don't know the password at the time of Win2K install, but try leaving it blank. Many times, the password is null in 98' so an upgrade would have defaulted to "null" also.

Hope this helps someone.