Logging on (W2K)

[Reading]

I have a laptop that I cannot log on to. While I know the admin password, and it appears to log me on, as soon as it brings up the wallpaper, it notifies me that its saving my settings and returns me to the log in screen. The same is true if I try to logon to a different domain and a different user. I have access to the registry file over a network and have cleaned out the logon entries in that, but still, I cannot log on with any profile in order to check the startup directory or anything else that might be going on. Has anyone seen this before? Is there anything I can do? I'd hate to lose the information on the laptop

[motoflop]

If you have remote access, you have many options and there is no reason to be desperate yet.

Try this from command prompt (cmd.exe):

net use x: \\laptop\c$ * /user:laptop\Administrator

That maps whole c drive on your laptop as drive letter x. Note "laptop" is either computer name of your laptop or tcp/ip address of it.

W2K has also builtin telnet server. You can start it and then have command prompt access to that computer.

You can manage remotely that pc from Computer Management. There is option to connect another computer in File or Action menus. If there are authorization errors, you could first use previous net use command to map a drive, so computer management will use same credentials. Alternatively you could use this:

net use \\laptop\ipc$ * /user:laptop\Administrator

and the try computer management again. From computer management you can create new local admin acount and try to log on with it. New users can also added from telnet session with "net user" command.

At least regedt32.exe allows to you to connect remote registry. You can the use Load Hive functionality to load Administrators user profile for editing.