Valerie

Kia ora Dave, good to see another flag on the boards. V...

Schloss - only one word to describe CHNTPW and that's brilliant. The system is now booting, without password, to the Administrator account with full access to all files. Many thanks for your help and guidance.

I echo your sentiments especially as this user was usually very careful about what was done to the system. I have run the program you suggested and the result is: 01f4 | Administrator | ADMIN | dis/lock | 01f5 | Guest........... | (blank) | dis/lock | I have tried logging on to Administrator using both the known password and a blank, but get the same error message "The system could not log you on.... etc", the user claims not to know of any Administrator password. My understanding is that the account which was deleted was the user account with admin privileges which was setup when the OS was installed. I guess the final solution will be to recover as much as possible then attempt to change the Administrator password and try booting again. If that doesn't work then I will format and re-install etc.... But will wait for your final guidance/suggestions... Martin H - thank you for your suggestion, as you will see above it didn't work for me.

It was the only user account. I understand that there was an Admin account but the pc always booted to the User account prior to its deletion.

Win 2k Pro, pIV, 512 ram. All was running well but in an attempt to stop being asked for the user password (which is known) the user deleted the user account. Now on bootup the password is still required but entering anything in the dialog box brings up the message: The displayed User name is what it was before the account was deleted. The original OS cd and coa are available. Any cure other than a full re-install? Please note that password recovery info is NOT what's wanted, a method of reinstating the user account is. Thanks

This worked for me and for several others with the same problem: Re-register the Windows Update DLL with the commands below Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. Type the following commands. Press ENTER after each command. regsvr32 wuapi.dll regsvr32 wuaueng.dll regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll regsvr32 wucltui.dll regsvr32 wups.dll regsvr32 wups2.dll regsvr32 wuweb.dll Good luck. V..

XXClone is worth a look http://www.xxclone.com/ V...

Thank you but that seems to be for slipstreaming W2k with SP and hotfixes etc. What I'm looking for is a method of automating the hotfix installs without reinstalling the entire OS. V..

Win.2k SP.4 I have downloaded all the updates/hotfixes since SP.4 and am now looking to automate their installs. I can write a script to do this but don't know how to get round having to click the "Agree" box and the "Do not restart now" box. Is this possible please? V..

Compaq Notebook Evo N1020v - 256mb ram - Windows 2K Pro SP.4. Using the above with an external monitor (lcd screen u/s) - all going very well except>>> Created a desktop shortcut to CMD, added the exe options of /T:1F and /K CLS to start with a blue background, white lettering and to CLS. Changed the Start in dialog to c:\ and checked the option to start in Full Screen mode. When I open the shortcut the screen goes black, no prompt or anything else visible. After opening the shortcut there seems to be a lot of access on the hdd then nothing regardless of how long it's given. Hitting Alt+Enter shows the Command Prompt screen as a fairly small window, again hitting Alt and Enter returns to the blank screen. I am using the Cmd shortcut in Win.2k on more than one desktop without problem, any ideas as to why the Evo hardware setup gives a problem? Edit: 2k drivers installed were downloaded from the HP site.

Oops - it's not hardware, 'tis software. My error. When SP.4 finishes installing, the option to reboot 'now' or not reboot is shown. I have been opting not to reboot at that time and going on to install the hotfixes which were produced after SP.4 and rebooting when that was completed. Today I did reboot after SP.4 then installed the hotfixes and the problem with the MFT has not appeared. So my conclusion is that a reboot is necessary after installing SP.4 regardless of the option not to reboot being available. Thank you for your time. V...

The MFT error is displayed and again D: is "seen" in bios and My Comp. C: performs perfectly. BTW the error does not appear if the disk is not partitioned (other than C:)

Pc Compaq Deskpro - Celeron A 495mHz - 128mb SDRAM. Onboard sound, pci modem. Partitioned and formatted an 8Gb hdd (C:=3gb D:=remainder) and installed Win.2k Pro. No problems noted. System ran ok, installed AVG and Zone Alarm then rebooted. Immediately after the splash screen displayed, a notification was posted that drive D: was being checked then a further message that the Master File Table was corrupt and CHKDSK was aborted. Immediate thought was that the hdd had failed but it passed the manufacturer's diagnostics. Drive D: was shown in the My Computer window but could not be accessed. Reformatted the partition (used Disk Management) and continued using it until another reboot when the above problems repeated. No problems with C: Installed a different hdd, partitioned/formatted - no problems with W2k install. Installed programs, rebooted, repeat of above error Second thought was that the W2k cd was defective so used it to install on another pc without problems. Installed programs and rebooted several times without error. Installed Win XP Home on the Deskpro using the original hdd which W2k picked as being defective, no errors. Both the W2k and XP cd's are genuine with coa's. Current thought is that there is 'something' in the Deskpro hardware which causes the problem with W2k. Any ideas please?

Windows 2000 SP.4. I'm trying to add CMDHERE to the context menu as in the above quote. I've downloaded the file from the Resource Kit and ended with an .INF file. My question is - what do I do with the file now? How do I get the command added to the context menu? Thanks. Edit: Found out what's to be done to install the file, plse ignore the above.

Thank you both - I will investigate Terracopy and Robocopy. V..

No - get that feel-good feeling by donating to your local Breast Cancer Support Group. Every little helps. Thanks

XP Home sp.2 fully updated. Hypothetical situation. Lots of file transfers over a network. Three batch files used for copying, each file takes say 45 mins to run individually. Obviously that's over two hours if the files are run consecutively. If all three files are started at one time (three cmd.exe's running) would there be an appreciable time saving? Thanks

Is it factual that XP has inbuilt features to prevent booting from an external diskdrive?

Thank you both very much. I do not have any problem with Add/Remove, my query was just to increase knowledge. V..

XP Home. When Add\Remove is populating the list of programs where does the list come from? Is it C:\Program Files?

A friend who insists on using Outlook 2003 often opens e-mails in which the body is a total blank. When opened using a different program (Outlook Express/Thunderbird etc) the entire e-mail is visible. Googling shows lots of reports of similar occurrences but I haven't as yet found a cure. All updates are in place. Any ideas please?

Is this what you're looking for?

There's just so many on the WWW, Kelly's Korner has close to 400 here... Good luck

Thank you both Jaclaz and Riso for your additional comments. Here is the MS KB on drive letter assignments showing that Primary Partition drive letters are allocated before others (but not why). Not having a Primary Partition on the second physical hard drive has already paid dividends for me. Thanks again.

Thank you all for your prompt responses. The reason I wanted to change the partition type is because of the way MS-Dos allocates drive letters to Primary Partitions first, regardless of whether the partition is on the Master or Slave drive. With multiple partitions this means that the partitions on the Master drive could be allocated drive letters C:, E:, F: etc... whilst on the Slave drive the partitions could be D:, G:, H: etc... I know there are 3rd party programs such as Letassig which will allow for changes to drive allocations when running in Windows but the allocations change back to the MS-Dos setup when working with the Command shell. I probably just wanted a lazy way to change the allocations. I have now installed a third hdd as Master on the secondary ide, copied all data files from the primary ide slave then Fdisk'd the primary ide slave to partition without a Primary Partition, creating just an Extended Partition with Logical Partitions within. All working well. Thanks again for your efforts on my behalf. V...