hey everyone...i was wondering if someone could help me with a problem

we were trying to hook up a computer to my home network and realized that the network on the computer was a domain while the rest of ours at home were on a workgroup. so, i had the computer join my home work group instead of it's previous domain. the join was successful but once the computer restarted, we can now no longer log onto that computer! is there anyway to bypass the network logon? my father has extremely important work files on that computer, and we cannot log on! i tried canceling out of the logon but there is no way to even get to the desktop without logging on. his previous name and password now won't work after changing to the workgroup, and i can't logon to change back to the domain. i'm so lost! please help!!!

i believe he is running windows professional XP on that computer.

So, previously by logging in into the domain, it does works? What was the domain? That's unusual as well, since the domain server is not at your network, how to you login into domain? Well, you have to try the "Administrator" account. You should be able to get the password from the guy who setup/install the windows on that machine. If you can't, there are tools that can reset the "Administrator" password, it's call "chntpw". It's a linux program. We normally run it off a live cd. Well, you try the proper way first. If still cannot, I'll upload the cd image, so you can download it, and try.

Good Luck

At the login screen the default is going to be for the machine to log on to the domain. Clicking the options button should reveal the "Log on to" option. From this field select the local machine, assuming you have an ID for the local machine that is.

Given your statements that the Pc has your fathers work information and that it typically connects to a domain I am going to assume that the PC is from his work. Thusly the IT dept or whoever should be able to supply said ID.



If it logs into a domain it has XP pro.


This post has been edited by Darasen: May 16 2008, 03:13 PM

Also, please note that when you have login in by using the local user account that is on windows xp
computer. Your desktop setting might be different from that is domain user account.

You have to check out the %systemdrive%\document and settings to get the documents back
that's on my documents.

Try booting in safe mode (reboot en start hitting F8 right before the windows logo would appear on the screen), this way you should be able to login as a local administrator (if you know the administrator password of course, otherwise you might have to call the IT guys at your fathers work) and retreive all the information.

There is a possibility that the data wasn't even stored on the computer itself, it happens quite often that all data (even my documents) is stored on the server for easy back-ing up.