Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Admin lockout

0 helpful
7 replies

by bennzo

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I'm working on a 2nd hand pc bought by a friend, it has win98 installed but unfortunately the previous admin has set a password and locked out several functions for his use only including network and display settings. To make things difficult thereare around 35 different user profiles and pwl files as well so I don't even know who the admin logged in as previously. Is there a way to reset/delete these short of wiping the hdd and starting afresh?

7 replies

by timthetoolman

Hi,

It sounds like your PC is in an unusual state. I cant imagine why someone would go to such lengths to secure their PC? And 35 other users?

Personally I wouldn't trust it. The only way to be sure of the machine would be to start again with it. Who knows what else is on the machine?

As long as you have the Win98 CD, drivers (or at least access to them via the net) and you aren't going to "miss" any software thats on the machine right now...

...I'd say the answer was reformat and start again...

Cheers,
Tim.

by mphoffar

You should be able to open the lockouts with poledit or use another machine to create a regkey to unluck those (poledit should be able to do this for you also). Another utility that'll do this for you is tweakui, which you can download pretty much anywhere.

In all honesty, with 35 user accounts on there, you're probobly better off starting from scratch. My experience with machines like this is, once you got one thing taken care of, something else crops up.

Good luck to you

Mark

by shanghai sam

As Win98 was never written for multi-user security, it is very easy to reset all of the passwords to a blank password. There are two things that need to be dealt with. To reset all of the passwords just delete all of the pwl files in the Windows directory. The next time you log on with any of the accounts, the password will be blank. You may just want to move the pwl files to another directory so you can keep track of the account names they represent.

The next thing is if you want to delete the user profiles from the system. You go to the Control Panel. Choose the Users icon. In here you can delete the users you don't need.

You may have to go through each of the accounts after you wipe out the PWL files to find one that can delete the users profiles.

This discussion is closed to new replies.