This laptop is causing me no end of grief. Now when it gets to the welcome screen there are no user accounts to click on, so I can't get in. What the fuck is happening? How can I fix this?

Weird. I'm guessing you've tried safe mode? Usually an administrative account will appear when booting into safe mode.

From what I've read at techrepublic, it MIGHT (read: MIGHT) be a corrupt SAM (Security Account Manager). The SAM is the file where your user account settings are stored in.

Possible solution they provided:

1. Pull drive out and spin it up on another computer.
2. Go to \windows\system32\config
3. Rename SAM to SAM.old
4. Copy \windows\repair\SAM to \windows\systems32\config
5. Reinstall drive and boot up
6. It will treat u like a new user, so you'll need to copy your docs, etc from the old user in the \documents and settings\

Pulling out the HD is a little awkward when you're using a laptop, but I see no problem using a DOS boot disk to do this, if you already created one.

Let me know if it helped.

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d&b session 20090519
My take on... (various mixes planned, updated when I can be arsed)

Y'all might be intereseted in a programme called NTFS4DOS which provides real DOS mode for XP. Costs a little I think.

Also, there is (freeware) BartPE (based on WindowsPE) which boots up XP from a CD and you can drag all your data off on to an external HD or other media and reformat and reinstall XP and still retain all your data.

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Mikey Mike Social outcasts are often of the opinion that they must have a drink before being able to loosen up with their inhibitions, thus being able to have a good time. There's a word that sums up this sort of behaviour, and that word is 'reject.'