Am trying to help a friend who has a Gateway desktop (512 megs of RAM, Pent. IV). Just this morning she tryed to start windows XP and got a message that her administreative password was not correct. I have tried to help and run into a real problem. The computer will not go into safe mode (won't even go into safe mode with a command prompt) It just comes up with a message screen saying that the passord is not correct and restarts. She does have a restore CD which will take her into the repair console. When she selects repair she get a screen that asks for the administrator password. SHE CAN'T REMEMBER and has tried every conveivable passord with no luck. I called Gateway and one technician had me go into BIOS and set the administrator passord and user password in BIOS) I did and he said that should take care of the problem. It didn't. I have looked at sites but have not found any real suggestions that could help. This lady has over 5000 geneology listings on her hard drive (she only has one) as well as considerable tax information. Of course she didn't back up anything. Correct me if I am wrong but is there not a way to take the batter out of the computer and leave it out for a period of time (an hour or so) and then replace it. Doing so should set the administrative password to none (no password) I could sure use any and all ideas of how to help her get back into windows. I've read Microsofts suggestions but I can't get far enough into Safe Mode to do anything. Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions. Steve Bell

Perhaps the following link may help you. Good Luck! http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference." Frost

Along with DocMemory's link, review this one Another alternative is to boot to cd, run a windows install and create a partition from unused space. Install XP to that partition. From that partition you should be able to edit the original installations user accounts. Lesson learned (back up, back up, back up, your critical data). sLLs

LL has given you the best link for the fix. B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

The Dell Tech was full of BS. The BIOS password has nothing to do with the Windows Administrator password. Don't need to remove batter or any of that nonsense. Michael J

If it will not even boot into SAFE mode then 99 times out of 100 you have a hardware issue. Mount the drive as a slave in another machine and try to recover your files that way. Jimi_l

1. TRY TO GO TO THE SAFE MODE AND RESET THE PASSWORD! AND IF IT IS THE SAFE MODE ADMIN THEN TRY TO DO A PARELLEL INSTALLATION AND THEN BACK UP THE DATA.U WILL LOOSE ALL THE PROGRAMMES INSTALLED AND U WILL HAVE TO SEARCH FOR THE MY DOC FOLDER, AND THEN TRY TO BACK UP ALL THE DATA AND THEN DO A FORMATT AND REINSTALL THE PROGRAMMES THAT U HAD. FOR A PARRELLEL INSTALL FOLLOW: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/installxpcdparallell/index.htm GOOD LUCK Chang Platforms Support Desktop Microsoft Corporation