System Administrator Error

[Brandii]

Hello Everyone:

I am trying to help my father out with his computer someone in his home had download a virus which is now gone but he has two problems with his computer now which I believe is from the virus the settings were changed and for some reason I can't get him to change them back. He is setup as the system administrator however his computer does not see it that way, he can't access either of his CD drives because they won't open so he is unable to formatt because he can't get either drive to read the CD's. I had suggested that he try system restore but the virus had turned off the system restore and he can't turn it back on because he computer does not see him as the System Administrator, he can't even go to Window's update because it won't allow him to download updates because he is not considered the Administrator. We have gone over all the settings and have confirmed that he is indeed the Administrator. Is there a way to reverse the System Administrator error so that he is able to change the settings in order to access his CD's and turn on his system restore. Any help would be appreciated. Many Thanks

Brandii

[flanzig1]

Try going into control panel/add new hardware and run the add hardware wizard. When it comes up to the list of installed devices, see if they are there. If they are,click already installed and they should be back on line.

[Miz]

If he wants to format and reinstall (also called "clean install), the computer needs to boot to the XP CD before it ever boots into Windows. Complete instructions for doing that are on this page. All data (documents, email, address books, pictures, etc.) will be lost unless you can get them backed up to another harddrive or to CDs/DVDs.

If he's rather try another route (create a new user account and migrate his data into that account), first boot into the main Administrator account:

If XP Home, that account is only available in Safe Mode (repeatedly press and release the F8 key during boot up; at the boot menu, choose Safe Mode, press the Enter key). Since most people don't bother to password that account, leave the password field blank and press the Enter key.

If XP Pro, at the Welcome screen, press Ctrl/Alt/Del twice to bring up the Administrator account logon. If there is no password, leave the password field blank.

Once in the Administrator account, follow the rest of the instructions in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile.

Then your father will have new user account hopefully without the damage from the virus infection.