Does anyone know about Win 2000?
I have a laptop with Windows 2000 on it, I basically used it for e-mail (dial up) , offsite bids and such.
I set up a wireless home network and tried to put the laptop on it using a wireless card.
The laptop worked great alone, I would put my login and passcode in and it would boot up. BUT, I changed my network settings in the laptop (computer came from a defunct telecom company) to match my home network and when I rebooted the system some security profile came on and NOW when the login screen comes on and I enter ny user name and passcode and it tells me to go cheney myself, I didn't change anything but the click from domain to workgroup in the network settings?... I don't have any disks for it or anything..
IS there any way I might be able to get into the system and change it back? or at least retrieve my info to put on another system?
Thanks
A couple of things come to mind. Win 2K has some pretty good security features, and I think this is what you're running into. First, do you have the Administrator's p/w for the local machine? At the login screen you'd enter Administrator as the user name and the password for the Local Machine Administrator account. I'm guessing that when you set up your username/password you didn't make yourself a memeber of the group "Administrator." Since this PC came off of a corporate network, there should be a drop-down box option to let you select "Domain" or "Local Machine" (side note: this is useful for an adminstrator to be able to troubleshoot and/or install). Perhaps you're trying to use your username and p/w but trying to log into the domain/workgroup rather than the local machine and don't have the necessary rights. A little more detail on the exact steps you used to get to where you are now would be helpful.
If you can't get into the machine at all under any circumstances, there is really no convenient way to bypass the security to get into anything. Win 2K does not have a feature to boot to DOS (or Command) mode. Short answer: if you can't get in, you might as well write-off EVERYTHING you've got in it.
If this were a desktop PC, you could try taking the hard drive out and attaching as a secondary drive to another 2K PC (I've not tried this myself). Much harder with a notebook without necessary adapter cables, etc.
Feel free to post back or e-mail me and I'll try to help as I can.
Bill
There are Linux boot disks with programs to reset Win2k passwords.....google it, download at own risk....but it's doable.....I had to do it once, & was very gratefull to the programmer(s) who open source posted the program......
I was going to suggest the Linux boot disks also. Have used them to recover passwords for NT 4.0 and Win2000.
The very first thing I'd try would be to log in as "Administrator" with no password. It's a long shot, but you never know. Many system administrators will remove that password when selling or giving away a machine.
There will be no dropdown to toggle between the local machine and the domain, because you left the domain when going back to the workgroup.
The reason you cannot login is that your account is a "domain" account, and not a local one. There is a difference. I'm guessing you either had an account on the machine when it was part of the corporate network, or renamed an existing domain account.
The first step is getting/resetting that administrator password. Once that is done you can log in, set up a new account and copy your data over from the old one.
And no, there's no reason you'd have to "write-off" everything on it. At most you might have to pay an IT geek to copy your data off and reinstall Win2k, but that person would likely be able to reset the Administrator password anyway, making a file copy unnecessary.
I agree, the Linux boot disk works great to reset passwords on NT, 2000, and XP. Been using it for years.
Move to XP as your OS. No benefit to Win2000 other than it provided some enhanced network security for the corporate environment, which you have found out is a headache for the consumer. What brand is the laptop?
Actually, no. There would be no benefit of going to XP for an older laptop used for basic applications. If anything, it will run slower.
Since XP was built on top of 2000, the security issues are almost identical. In this particular scenario, he would have had the same issue had he been running XP.
I heard no mention of an older laptop. What I did hear was wireless connections, which are supported in XP far better than on Win2000. Although XP was originally built off the Win2K kernal, alot has changed, especially since SP2. I see alot of corporations going to XP for ease of use and deployment, not to mention driver support.
Win2000 + "computer came from a defunct company" = older laptop.
Or maybe that's just me.
Regardless, the problem was not with 2000, XP or the wireless setup. It was the result of making a configuration change without considering all the implications of that change. The fix, which has hopefully happened by now, is free or very low cost.
Whether it is worth upgrading to XP for this particular machine is a separate issue altogether.
Steve, you make a good point about the older laptop. I haven't ran Win2000 for some time, but it seems to me that it had issues with supporting wireless cards anyway. Maybe worth while to look at a new one. New laptops are under $600 in some cases.