It sounds to me like you have a job on your hands. It's a shame that you did not know of the situation before you bought it. I assume that it is a private user computer, not one you use at the office, or wherever...
From what you have shared with us, I think that you have very limited options. And the suggestions I make here are the best you can hope for on a legitimate level.
Since you have nothing to lose by messing about a wee bit, you can try a variety of things.
One method might be to install a parallel operating system on a different partition on the same computer, then use a simple trick to gain access to the old system. Check this URL out... it has some great suggestions...
Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Alternate Logon Trick
OR...If it were me, I'd take it to a small computer shop that builds computers, not a franchise operation, and have them break it open for you...ie. kill the SAM file and re-write it, or the syskey.exe file, etc....
If they cannot do it, then I'd ask their advice about doing the following, and if they can do it for you...or
even if it is possible...
i] buy a new hard drive and set it up as a slave drive on the same computer
ii] reset the BIOS to accept the slave as the new main drive and install a fresh copy of XP on that drive, with the old main drive now set up as a slave...
iii] it is the
system32\config folder and files in it...that is causing the problem ...in those files is held the password...we need to isolate them...
iv] once that has been done, and the "new version of XP" is operational, copy the old hard drives files on to the new hard drive set up EXCEPT FOR THE FOLLOWING FOLDER AND FILES...
windows\system32\config\*.*
That you want to leave where it is. If this works, then kill the entire slave drive's contents OR by take it physically out of the computer...it will probably go belly up soon anyway because of age...so no loss...trash it!
Another suggestion, if it were me, and I await a correction on this from other readers and the forum chairman...would be to get what you can off the hard drive by burning the progs to disks, and then f-disk the whole thing. That will eliminate any need for password salvaging. You would need to be able to access the setup from a reboot. Then reinstall a clean version and follow that up with a reinstall of the other apps.
1. do you have the install disks, or the install progs, for the extra apps on board...
2. if you do, or if you can burn them on to a blank CD, then we need to do that...
3. once that has been done, insert the original XP CD and go through a complete re-install, pausing for the f-disk process...ie. do a complete reinstall, but at the set up stage, you will want to chose the appropriate option to completely clean the hard drive, and set up a new installation of XP... p.s. order a new CD for XP SP2 or download the whole upgrade while you can still access MS from whichever computer you chose...
4. I am hoping that you have enough access to be able to do this...
Other options are way too complicated to explore here, or involve some activity that is not appropriate for this forum
