Shut Out of XP - No Admin Password or CDR
- by ashes999
I inherited an old WinXP/Linux dual-boot machine from the stoneage. Because it has Linux, the regular boot process is replaced with the Fedora boot loader; I cannot, therefore, press F8 strategically to tell my PC to boot from CD.
Even if I could, it's a moot point; the CDR doesn't seem to recognize any CDs. To make things worse, there's no option to network boot.
The original user is probably long gone; I don't know the password for any of the Administrator group users. I can login using my corp account, but that's unprivileged on this machine.
Since I'm not an admin, I can't do crazy things, like looking at boot.ini. Or deleting files. I only have 500MB free on my C drive. I'm pretty sure I can't boot from a USB, since I didn't see any settings for this in my BIOS.
How can I get admin access for my user?
Edit: Things I've tried:
Boot from CD (CD not recognized)
Launch CD from XP (CD not recognized)
Install Daemon Tools Lite so I can install from an ISO -- don't have admin privileges
XP password recovery tool -- requires admin privileges
Adding an admin user -- no access to Control Panel Users since I'm not an admin
Logging in as both the admin users on the system (trying some standard passwords)
Using Fedora to chntpw (the Fedora version installed is ancient -- 2.7)