I have a dell laptop that I have used for the last 3 years. when the laptop boots up it always takes me to a login screen that has my name in the user field and I leave the password blank and click OK. this has worked fine this way for years. I do not have this computer attached to any domain in work it is a stand alone unit. the other day I turned on the PC and when I hit the OK at the login screen I get an error "Windows could logon becasue the domain is not available" I do not know what happened. Is there any way I can get past this logon like use xp boot disk, etc... or am I dead in the water and need to reinstall xp from scratch thanks mprimo5
sorry forgot to mention I did reboot in safe mode and it still takes me to the login screen with the same result. I do know that it is sp3 Thanks in advance for any help
no I did not try either of those two suggestions. but I will give them both a shot. thanks for the advice mprimo5
You could boot with a PE (Pre-installation environment) disc and edit the registry or change the administrator password. Another trick is changing the "domain name" on the login screen (below user/pass) to the local computers name instead of a domain name. ...last off the top of my head, but not least, you can try a system rollback or as suggested above last known good config. There are several password recovery/reset tools available, google will find them....hey it's just 2 cents worth, whaddya expect.
2cents worth, thanks for the advise. Last night I deactivated the network card in bios and I also booted to the last known good configuration and both situations took me to the login screen which gave me the same message that the domain is not available. I attempted to use the xp boot disk to get to a windows repair but during the 6th(last) boot disk install I got the blue screen of death telling me about a fatal error and to reboot. I rebooted and again got to the logon screen. also the login screen does not give me any option of selecting the local computer name. when I click on options nothing happens I get no expanded window or any options. I just found and downloaded a version of PE disk. I have never used this. is this a bootable disk? thanks
offon7544, Are you saying did I try to log on repeatedly after I deactivated the card? If so yes after deactivating I saved and exited bios then the system rebooted to the login screen and I hit OK multiple times and the domain message appeared.