Locked out of Windows 7

[tillypeg]

I am not very technically-minded but this is my experience of being locked out of Win7.

A while ago I had exactly the same problem saying the user profile cannot be loaded.  I had two profiles, one was Tilly with no Administrator authority with no password required, the other was OH with Administrator authority, with password.  It was OH’s profile which could not be loaded.  OH could still get to all his stuff through C>Users>Tilly but could not authorise any changes etc.  Because of this, I Tilly couldn’t do any changes or alter my profile to add Admin authority to my profile.  Took ages to read through tons of stuff online and eventually cracked it.

Can’t remember exactly what I did, but started with F8 into Safe Mode with Command, you don’t need password for this stage, just as smudwhisk stated.  Activated the hidden built-in Admin account (plenty online which states exactly what to type but something like net user administrator /active:yes), reboot and a new Admin profile appears on the desktop and then through that profile I created a new profile with Admin rights.  From that I amended the Tilly profile to also include Admin rights.  Created a new OH profile with different name.  Copied & pasted all old OH’s stuff over to new OH profile.  Took a while but I wasn’t confident enough to tackle altering the Registry.
 
Even if you only have the one profile, you should be able to activate the hidden Admin profile from F8 Safe Mode with Command.  If you do sort this out, make sure you make another (spare) profile with Admin rights, purely in case this happens again.

Good luck.  It took me a few tries with F8 and also a few attempts to get the right message in the Command box. 

[polidor]

To all the Rootschatters who have responded to my 'problem' .I have been away from home  for the last 8 days. Now I am back I will re-read all the helpful suggestions and let you know how I get on 
 Poli.

[polidor]

Disaster-----I appear to have pressed something I shouldn't!

I pressed one of the 'f' buttons at the top of the keyboard and was asked if I wished a to do a
Recovery I did this and now appear to have wiped my laptop clean---

Completely new desktop with basic 'pics' I have , apparently, nothing personal- files- photos- TREE etc. What have I DONE?  Poli

[matthewj64]

It has probably created a new user rather than wiped everything and all your old stuff is still there somewhere in various folders.

M

[Midase]

The recovery has probably taken it back to it's 'out-of-the-box' state, therefore all files and data has gone.

[polidor]

Have had to call in an expert---coming to collect laptop tomorrow. When I spoke to him on the phone he didn't hold out much hope!

 To think of ALL my files and years of photos gone. Years ago you had all your pics developed in a shop and you wrote everything important down.

I DO have a small amount of photos on an external drive but not my TREE or documents.

When I pressed for restore it gave no indication that it was anything other than the usual type of restore but I should have been alerted by the fact that there wasn't a choice of dates to return to!

Too late now, I shouldn't have thought I knew what I was doing when I pressed keys I wasn't sure about. I'll just cross my fingers and hope the I T man can salvage something.  Poli

[matthewj64]

If you have a look in C:>Users there will be folders for all accounts on the laptop. There's a good chance that the folder for the account you were locked out of will still be there with all of your documents etc. The recovery option you clicked may have just performed a repair and created a new blank account. I would have expected warnings if it was going to delete everything.

If it has reinstalled the laptop back to day one, then there is still a chance to find and recover your documents if they haven't been overwritten, your IT person should be able to do this.

fingers crossed!

M

[polidor]

Well, called in someone who advertised locally. He finally charged me after 2 days an extremely large sum ( could have bought a new laptop)!  Hadn't managed to resurrect old files and photos and my tree was gone too.

I do have a good number of photos and videos on an external hard drive and I do have my tree on Ancestry. Trouble was that although it contained all names and a lot of info I don't like the tree layout there. On my laptop I had my tree set up on Family TreeMaker 2005 whose layout I prefer.

After several days of 'mourning' I searched through my desk and to my delight found a CD I had downloaded the FTM tree onto about 7 years  ago. Uploaded it in sheer delight. It is about 3 or 4 hundred names short of my latest tree but am managing ---slowly---to begin entering the other names. This updated tree will definitely be put onto another CD
  poli

P s let this be a warning to others to keep an offsite copy