bitter magnet

ok after browsing the net more, i think i figured out what i'm going to try next (to salvage my laptop). it will have to wait till Wednesday though, since i need a Windows 2000 installation CD (and my dad left his in San Jose).

anyways, i read somewhere that said that if your SAM registry file is messed up as well, the administrator password authentication won't work (and thus you won't be able to use the Recovery Console to repair the registry). so i guess that could explain it...

but anyway, i heard from at least 2 sources that the way to repair this issue in Win2k is not to use the Recovery Console, but to use Fast Repair (in Emergency Repair option). This supposedly uses an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD), but one website said that if the ERD is not there it can try searching your computer for a Win2k installation and getting it from there. However, according to this Microsoft tip, you can actually make an ERD if you have a recent backup tape of the system, by copying some system state files to a formatted floppy disk.

So the plan is to boot using the Windows 2k installation CD, but instead of hitting (C) for the Recovery Console, hit (R) for Emergency Repair, and then Select Fast Repair option (will use this newly created ERD).

anyway, in order to get access to the tape backup, i have to install TSM on this desktop here at home, and then login and restore a certain system folder. that's all going to take a while since i have dialup here (TSM is a 40 MB installation file, after about 20 minutes only 7 MB has been downloaded).

so i hope this works....