registry

Try to use tools like NTRecover is part of an entire suite of programs from www.winternals.com called the Administrators Pack. This is something that I keep in my bag of tricks. It has come to the rescue on more than one occasion. The documentation comes in the form of Adobe PDF files and can be printed out or viewed on the computer.

This documentation takes you step by step through the whole process and the company is there to stand behind you if you run into a problem and need a little help.

Another option is on the following site: home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ This one is basically a freebee but you are on your own if you have problems. Unless you are really comfortable with NT at a registry level, I strongly suggest going with the stuff from www.winternals.com

A second option and a last resort is to reinstall NT and restore from the last backup you have. If you don't have a backup that is fairly recent, proceed very carefully while you are recovering the registry. Get a good backup once you can get back in with the "fixed" registry.