I want to start Recovery Console by booting from the XP Installation CD and choosing the "R" option. The system asks for a password but won't accept the administrator password and won't accept nil input if there is no password set. What am I doing wrong? XP + SP2 Trevor

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Use the the password for the built-in Administrator account.
If more than one Administrator account is created on the system, try making all passwords 
the same.
Case matters! Check your CAPS LOCK light at boot.
More info on changing the Password for the Administrator Account =
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298252/en-us

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Also, look at his one.... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308402/en-us

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Can you boot regularly or boot to Safe Mode/ If so, go into User Accounts in Control Panel and assign a password to the Administrator account. Logoff and logon to Administrator with the new password, make sure it works (for XP Home you need to boot to Safe Mode to do this). If okay then try the Recovery Console again.

You can remove the password when done (and try the RC again just to see if it will now work without a password).

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Thanks for the reply. I can boot Normal, or Safe but whether there is a password for the administrator account set or not, the recovery console won't accept it not will it accept NIL input (in the case of no password set). I've since found that I may not be able to use Recovery Console anyway because when I attempted to load it to my HD (rather than run it from the CD) it just told me that the version of Windows I had was newer and therefore could not continue. I just have XP + SP2 with NO updates added since install. Trevor


On Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 7:15 am, Rich Kurtz wrote:
>Can you boot regularly or boot to Safe Mode/ If so, go into User Accounts in Control
>Panel and assign a password to the Administrator account. Logoff and logon to Administrator
>with the new password, make sure it works (for XP Home you need to boot to Safe Mode
>to do this). If okay then try the Recovery Console again.
>

You can remove the password when done (and try the RC again just to see if it
>will now work without a password).

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Create a new XP CD slipstreamed with SP2 (and updates it you want).

The simplest way to create a Bootable Windows XP Pro or Home Installation CD Slipstreamed with SP2 is to use Autostreamer. You point to your XP Pro/Home CD, the SP2 Service Pack .exe file, give it a path to write the .iso file to and off it goes.

In 5 or 10 minutes you have a .iso file that you can burn to CD with almost any CD burner program you want to use. I used Roxio 7. There is a good freeware burner called DeepBurner which will do this also.

Here is the link to Autostreamer: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Autostreamer.shtml

You can download the SP2 .exe here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

An excellent alternative is nLite. It allows you to merge SP1/SP2/Windows Updates into a new XP CD image that you can install from. Takes a bit of fiddling with but worth the effort since it also allows you to pre-answer all the questions asked during install so all you have to do is boot the new CD, select where you want to install, format or not and go to lunch. When you come back the install is finished and your are at the latest Service Pack and Update level. See here:

http://www.nliteos.com/

Use this site to get the MS updates: http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/
You can also get updates from an MS site but it takes more work: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/saveupdates.htm

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