I had an old laptop running XP a few years ago. After not using it for a few weeks, I forgot the password to the only account on there, and from there, it had a couple years to gather dust. I pulled it out earlier and tried putting Ubuntu on it, but before committing to that, I wanted to see if there was something I could do about the password so I could get my files back from the Windows partition. It turns out, it’s incredibly easy to hack into an XP account. A certain program running as a boot disk was able to figure it out pretty ■■■■ quickly (the password is something I swear I’ve tried a hundred times, but this time, it worked). Set aside the fact that I, as a n00b, was able to do this. There was one curious thing I found. My account wasn’t the only account enabled on that computer. There was another one called “Administrator” that didn’t show up on the welcome screen, and a password that gave away that it was some hacker who created it.
So back into my normal account, I check under control panel>users, and my account is the only one showing up under there. A google search let me know about a reg key that hides accounts from showing up on the welcome screen. I checked that area where it was suppose to be, a key named “Administrator” with a value of 1, but there was no such key there. I disabled the welcome screen so I could try to log into said account, but putting in the username and password nets me the error:
“Unable to log you on because of an account restriction”
And that’s roughly where I am. So a few questions: How can I get into this account/delete it? How can I prevent hackers from making these hidden accounts? How do I check for hidden accounts in Windows 7/Vista/8? And feel free to answer any other question that I meant to ask but didn’t. 88)
I’m unable to delete that account from within that account. So I switched back to my normal account. It’s showing “Administrator” under the User Accounts in the Control Panel now, but there’s no option to delete that account. I changed the password so it isn’t something that was set BY the hacker.
Since I don know what has been tinkered with xp lets try this
log in to your normal account (As long it’s not the guest account and your normal account is admin level)
Click on “Start”
Click on “run”
type this in or copy and paste from below :-La
control.exe useraccounts2
Now you can do what you want to do
edited it to add one more thing (I almost forgot about this)*******
If your thing about deleting the built in Administrator account, thats not going to happen. just disable it.
I still have an XP and well, pretty much still capable with it. Thing is, the administrator account’s always there for all XP installs unless it’s been disabled. By default, it’s always there. It shows up only during safe mode or by manually entering Administrator and entering nothing for the password (maybe a space or two for some especially for student/corporate editions). Unless that Administrator account’s passwords is somewhere in the lines of jifo3290fy8*!HF&%#21, it’s not a hack. It’s the original Administrator account.
If you want to strengthen your accounts’ safety, disable password caching and any mechanisms of the sort (i’ve forgotten which registry entry it was. It’s been so long.). And also disable that emergency Administrator account (or change the password) in exchange for a bonkers of a time getting things done in safe mode.
and your normal account is admin level)