Privileges

[JoeContois]

Hi,

A friend was throwing their computer away because it didn't work, so I took it and got it to work. It wouldn't power on so I unplugged it and held the power button down to 'refresh' the motherboard and it worked. So I get on it and am able to change the volume, open mouse settings (although it didn't change the pointers to 3d like I commanded), and I didn't receive any permission errors. Now, said friend has a bunch of pictures on the hard drive so I took it out so it was ready to be given to her, but then decided to put it back in and just burn the pictures (~30gb) to cds. After booting the computer back up it started showing permission errors for just about any changes. The computer also somehow had 3 updates it decided to install, despite not being connected to the internet, and the system had been turned on and off several times without it doing any updates, but all of a sudden it had updates shortly after I put the hard drive back in (within a couple of boots). Another thing that has happened today is that I took the cmos battery out to try to get the MB to recognise my usb keyboard before booting so I could get into safe mode. That didn't work, but I found a usb to p/s adapter so I got into safe mode with command prompt. I added every possible user to the administrator list. When I boot up normally, I only have one option to log in and that's Desktop.I added this user to the administrator group in safe mode and it says I was successful, however i still get permission errors for just about everything. I'm sorry for the super long text but I am just trying to give all information to try to expedite getting this resolved. Thanks so much.

 

[Elizabeth23]

xp pro or xp home or xp media center edition

make, model and model number of computer,

desktop or laptop

if you can get into safe mode, create user account as computer administrator, and delete all the other accounts.

what antivirus is installed?? can it scan in safe mode??

is malwarebytes installed on this pc??

 

[JoeContois]

Xp home.
Hp - not sure of model, I'm not home.
Desktop
When I log into safe mode, there are no accounts to log into.
No anti virus to my knowledge.
No malwarebytes.

 

[Elizabeth23]

when you log onto safe mode, there should be a list on the welcome screen of all users, if not then when you are in safe mode go to user accounts from the control panel are there any listed now??

================

from safe mode go to start/run/ type in cmd and click ok

the in command prompt type in chkdsk c: /r and press enter

then type Y for yes when prompted as to whether to run at the next restart

then type exit

restart pc and checkdisk will start , let it run , this is a lengthy process, then run again until no errors are found and fixed,

you can check the log by going to event viewer, ( control panel/administrative tools/event viewer.) application log, under Winlogon entry.

let me know what checkdisk says, if there are any users listed when you go to user accounts from the control panel, and ensure you are signing into safe mode as the XP Home built in administrator.

Also, when you return home you can look on the front of the tower of the desktop and see that it is a Hewlett packard, for example: compaq presario model number xxx... , or pavillion, ETC....

and also if you ever plan to have it online, I would suggest you download to a flash drive an antivirus and the antivirus database to install offline so that you can run this, but it will have to be one that can be run from safemode until we can get the pc to boot normally, OR you can download and burn from a working pc a rescue disk which will allow you to run a scan of the boot disk from the cd drive.

Some rescue disks can be downloaded from Avast, kaspersky or eset to name a few, do not know if malwarebytes, (which is not an antivirus) will run offline as the use an internet connection to download database.

 

[Jake1702]

This is why it's normally a good idea to create system restore points every so often. Does it have any restore points by chance? If it does try reverting to the most recent one. NOTE: Do it in safe mode on the built-in Administrator account.