2-part problem: Windows passwords/OE mail

[diggerB]

Okay part 1:

My friend called me up and asked me to look into his computer problem. Upon booting a Windows 2000 OS, it gets through both of the initial bootup screens (the text-based one and the graphical one) but shortly after it gets to the blue/green GUI screen it crashes and reboots. I attempted Safe Mode, and Last Known Good, and it didn't work. I tried all the repair options on the ERD. I tried going into the Recovery Console and when I pressed Enter for the blank Administrator password, it told me I had the wrong password. I tried a few common passwords and none of them worked.

I then booted from a Linux-based NT admin password changer (which has always worked before on other systems) and it indicated that the Administrator password was, as I suspected, blank. I put in a new password using that same utility, and it didn't work either.

So, it would seem that somehow, either by virus or h4xx or some other unknown cause, user account information is corrupted. That would explain the crash/reboot at the point in the boot process where the login screen should appear.

Any ideas on how to repair corrupt user accounts on a Win2K system?

[diggerB]

Part 2...

After giving up on trying to repair the installation, I installed Windows XP on another drive. No major problems along the way. However, my friend wants to import his Outlook Express emails from his corrupt Win2K installation into Windows XP and I can't figure out how to do this, or even if it can be done.

I managed to recover his Contacts, and using Outlook Express Backup I restored his emails from a backup we made about a month ago, but his emails are very important to his business.

Where are Outlook Express offline email files located, and is it possible to simply transfer those files to a new System?

[glc]

If you can read the drive from XP, just search it for *.dbx files, when you find folders.dbx, inbox.dbx, outbox.dbx, etc. you are in the right place. Note the path and run the OE import wizard, import from a store direcory, and point it to that folder. It's probably buried in documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\identities\some big huge alphanumeric string\microsoft\outlook express.

[WolfPac_Ite]

Hey Digger, You might be able to recover that system with a Anti Virus boot disk, And if you don't ahve an AV program to make a floppy from then you might be able to download one from somewhere.