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Deleted Win2k Administrator-Now What?

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by soupman

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We are currently testing Windows 2000 and have managed to delete the Administrator Account on one of the machines. (Opppsss!) It's not a production machine so it really wouldn't be a problem to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows 2000. But, is there an easier way to get the account back? If this were to happen in a regular production setting it would be really great to know the answer. Thanks alot for any help!

5 replies

by wcraigmiles

Use the recovery console and use the password you used when you installed the machine.

If you are not sure or comfortable with the recovery console, go to support.microsoft.com and search for recovery console. There are also some good books withsections that cover the recovery console.

by soupman

Thanks,

We did end up just reimaging the machine, but I have learned alot about recovery console in the process of this.

by ins413

I am under the understanding that the Admin account cannot be deleted, but it can be disabled or renamed. Same thing with the guest account. If the machine is in a domain environment, all domain admins have local admin rights to the machine by default if it is in the domain. I would try mmc and remotely manage the local users and groups snap-in on the pc to re-enable (or rename)the account. Again, that is only if the machine is on a domain, but I am about 1000% sure that the admin account cannot be deleted. Good Luck.

by soupman

Thanks,

We did end up reimaging the machine but I didn't know the domain admin also had local rights. Thanks for the info.

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