Have I ever mentioned that I hate Windows?
If not, then let it be known that I do. It's not that I like hating it... it's that I keep running into major issues that prevent me from even beginning to like it. It seems like every other day, I'm reassured that I made the right decision to move to Linux full-time years ago. And if you personally don't experience any retarded issues yourself with Windows, then cool. I do.
What am I on about this time? Well, for media center reasons, I created a password on my Windows account a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why, but I can never connect to the PC without a password, so I was forced to make one (if someone knows a way around this, I'd love to hear about it). Well, after a couple weeks of typing in the password at boot, I decided to go ahead and make it so I wouldn't have to anymore.
I used the "control userpasswords2" trick, rebooted, and sure enough, straight into Windows.
Oh, but wait... why can't I launch GPU-Z? What's this error at the desktop? What happened? Ahh, it seemed that what I did miraculously degraded my Administrator account to a Guest account, so my abilities were now limited... so limited that I couldn't even run a simple program like GPU-Z.
That's okay... I'll just log into the Administrator account and fix things. Oh, it's not enabled? I'll just enable it then... oh crap.
That's right, because of this screw-up, there were NO Administrator accounts on the PC. Not in regular mode, not in safe mode... none at all. I spent hours searching in Google for solutions, and nothing helped me out. The issues surrounding Administrator accounts are common, but it's not common to be in the same situation as I was where the "net user Administrator /active:yes" command wouldn't work - even in an elevated command prompt.
Four hours after this hassle began, I figured out the solution. In short, I had to boot up with the Windows 7 install DVD, go into repair mode, launch a command prompt, execute the registry editor, import a registry hive off of my local machine, and then head into my SAM configuration and change the hex value for the user "Administrator" from 10 to 11 which equates to "enable". After the reboot, I was good to roll.
You know what could have prevented this entire situation? If Microsoft included an option in the Users section of the Control Panel to enable an automatic logon. You know, like Linux.
If not, then let it be known that I do. It's not that I like hating it... it's that I keep running into major issues that prevent me from even beginning to like it. It seems like every other day, I'm reassured that I made the right decision to move to Linux full-time years ago. And if you personally don't experience any retarded issues yourself with Windows, then cool. I do.
What am I on about this time? Well, for media center reasons, I created a password on my Windows account a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why, but I can never connect to the PC without a password, so I was forced to make one (if someone knows a way around this, I'd love to hear about it). Well, after a couple weeks of typing in the password at boot, I decided to go ahead and make it so I wouldn't have to anymore.
I used the "control userpasswords2" trick, rebooted, and sure enough, straight into Windows.
Oh, but wait... why can't I launch GPU-Z? What's this error at the desktop? What happened? Ahh, it seemed that what I did miraculously degraded my Administrator account to a Guest account, so my abilities were now limited... so limited that I couldn't even run a simple program like GPU-Z.
That's okay... I'll just log into the Administrator account and fix things. Oh, it's not enabled? I'll just enable it then... oh crap.
That's right, because of this screw-up, there were NO Administrator accounts on the PC. Not in regular mode, not in safe mode... none at all. I spent hours searching in Google for solutions, and nothing helped me out. The issues surrounding Administrator accounts are common, but it's not common to be in the same situation as I was where the "net user Administrator /active:yes" command wouldn't work - even in an elevated command prompt.
Four hours after this hassle began, I figured out the solution. In short, I had to boot up with the Windows 7 install DVD, go into repair mode, launch a command prompt, execute the registry editor, import a registry hive off of my local machine, and then head into my SAM configuration and change the hex value for the user "Administrator" from 10 to 11 which equates to "enable". After the reboot, I was good to roll.
You know what could have prevented this entire situation? If Microsoft included an option in the Users section of the Control Panel to enable an automatic logon. You know, like Linux.
I had a really annoying time with windows media center a few weeks ago where it would not enable the internet tv so I could use netflix. I too had to dig out the repair disk. Its shocking really. How many little problems windows has after 15 years of experience.