To make a long story short, I had a working home network. Then, my stepson played around, and I can't do things as admin anymore.

Can I wipe out all users, admin, etc? The system is win 98.

Let's first begin with saying what doesn't work anymore....

Hey Rob- What doesn't work... First, was the general account user and password. So, I logged on as admin, but it won't allow me to set shared folders, or even launch the network monitor thingy. So, I'll assume the admin login is corrupted, or just not working.

I'd like to just delete all users, passwords, network stuff, and redo it from scratch. Can I?

Well, from the sound of it, no. It's been quite a long time since I
used Win98 (moved on to Windows 2000 and XP). But it sounds
like the best thing would be a complete re-install. I don't know
what you are using your PC for, but it might be best to keep
a seperate work PC from pleasure. Upgrading to a more mature
Operating System like Windows XP will help in avoiding these
kind of problems as well, but a seperate PC would be even better.

The problem with an OS like 98 is that there are no real privileges,
so you can't really login as "admin". Everybody is an admin on
that OS.

Part of what is keeping me from doing just that, is the fact I can't send the important stuff to the other pc to archive. This is mostly just a web browser these days, but it is my secondary work machine, with stuff I don't want to lose.

If I could reset all of the network stuff, I would send the files to my work pc, and do a full reinstall. Right now, they see each other, but won't transfer files.

Thanks anyways...

I could easily fix that with access to the machine, but it is nearly
impossible to fix it in this manner. I assume there is no burner
in there you could hook up to get the data off? Or an external
harddisk etc.?

I do have a cd burner, one 100 meg zip drive, and 10 gig of stuff to transfer. A lot of the stuff won't fit on cd, and the zip is pretty much worthless.

Well, it certainly is doable on CD. There are (free) programs available
that can split large files into multiple pieces. So if you ZIP the
10 GB of stuff into one file (and perhaps get it a bit smaller as
well), then split it with such a program you can fit it all on 15
CD's (700 mb version). Then use the program on the other
end to reconstruct the final file and extract it again with ZIP.

Yes it is tedious, but certainly quite possible. I agree that a
network would be much more handy, but you'll have to find
a win98 guru in your area if you want that to get running again
(most likely).

Otherwise it might be time to invest in a DVD burner or external
harddisk?

If the computers see each-other and you can ping one another
you might also try to find an FTP server program so you can
transfer files that way over your network (goes around windows
file sharing) etc. Or set up a small webserver software on the
windows 98 machine and download the files from the other
computer (as long as your network is TCP/IP based this should work)

Lots of ways to transfer files....

Wait, before you go and do all this work. Have you tried to restore the registry as described here? (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;221512)

I'll give that a try- Thanks Cliff!

Cliff- I tried restoring my registry, and it might have worked if I had tried it back when it happened. Windows made 5 copies of the registry, all from this month. Unfortunately, the problem happened months ago. Thanks anyways...

Despite all the hurdles and hoops, I had some success. I was finally able to delete all users, login, and Microsoft client, and restore some file sharing. It ain't what it used to be, but it will work. Thanks again for your suggestions Rob and Cliff.

uh... i didn't get the first question. win98 doesn't have admin accounts. any accounts is the same as the other. are you sure ya ain't referring to windows xp pro or home editions?

It is win98. The admin thing, was to keep prying eyes and idle hands out of MY pc, but allow me to get where I needed to be. I assigned a general user account to certain things, and the admin could do anything.

Somehow, the general user account stopped working, and the admin couldn't access the other pcs. They would see each other, but that was it. At least now, I have a shared folder on the win 98 machine, and can swap back and forth through it.

When I reformatted my machine, I did NTFS instead of FAT32, so the win98 machine won't read anything on that pc... much safer that way, I think. At least it works.

"Dammit Jim... I'm an Artist, not an I.T. tech!"

what do you mean general accounts vs admin? i thought all you had to do was hit cancel during login and you could access all files as if you were admin? that was the win 9x i remembered. with w2kxp you couldn't just hit cancel.

That's very true, but I had to set up accounts just the same, in order to network with the win2k box. And like I said, I was trying to keep people where they belonged... out of MY pc!

if you want to do that, install windows xp pro. w9x is not an OS you want to use if you want to keep people out of it. or if you want ultra-security... any flavor of linux.