1. Click Start, then point to Setting, Control Panel is not on the offered list. When trying to get to Control Panel via a link in Help and Support, got an error, "Operation has been cancelled due to restriction in effect on this computer. Contact your system administrator." 2. Local Users and Groups does not appear in Computer Management. There is only one user profile on the PC, the OS is XP Home. It appears my user profile lost its administrator privileges somehow. Could you please suggest how to fix this problem? Thanks in advance.

Hi PJohnson, Since when are you facing this issue?Did you make any changes to the computer before this issue started?Is the computer on a Domain network? However, you may boot the computer in safe mode and check if you can view control panel and access it and post back the result. To boot to the desktop in safe mode keep tapping F8 key during restart. Once you see the option to boot in safe mode select it and press enter. If you are unable to access and view control panel in your user account, you may boot again in safe mode and try to access the built in Administrator account and check if you can access it in the administrator account and post back the result. Hope this helps. Let us know the result. Thanks and Regards, Srinivas RMicrosoft Support.Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

It sounds more likely that your system is infected with malicious software that has changed some policy settings on your system. You can certainly see what happens with your Safe Mode options too.If the options for the policies has been tampered with, you may not see things like Control Panel in the Start Menu and if you try to launch the Control Panel in some other fashion (like running control.exe) you will see a message like this:The operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.Is that really the message you are seeing or is the message you posted really what you are seeing?Some malicious software will disable the things it knows you might use to find and remove it to try to fool you into just giving up on actually really fixing your problem and instead, tricking you into thinking you have to do something drastic like a System Restore, Repair Install or completely reinstall your XP. You can usually just outsmart it.Since there is no Group Policy Editor in XP Home (some malicious software knows that too), you will have (and you can) to fix your afflicted policies another way, but first you need to try to be reasonably sure there is no malicious software on your system, then fix any leftovers.There could be other things that don't work also that you don't even know about yet (Task Manager, regedit, Command Prompt, System Restore, etc.). The scanning softwares may not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate policy change and one made by malicious software, but you can still fix the policies after the scans. Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/They can be uninstalled later if desired.When the scans run clean, then troubleshoot any remaining issues.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

It sounds more likely that your system is infected with malicious software that has changed some policy settings on your system. You can certainly see what happens with your Safe Mode options too.If the options for the policies has been tampered with, you may not see things like Control Panel in the Start Menu and if you try to launch the Control Panel in some other fashion (like running control.exe) you will see a message like this:The operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.Is that the actual wording of the message you are really seeing?Some malicious software will disable the things it knows you might use to find and remove it to try to fool you into just giving up on actually really fixing your problem and instead, tricking you into thinking you have to do something drastic like a System Restore, Repair Install or completely reinstall your XP. You can usually just outsmart it.Since there is no Group Policy Editor in XP Home (some malicious software knows that too), you will have to fix your afflicted policies another way, but first you need to try to be reasonably sure there is no malicious software on your system, then fix any leftovers.There could be other things that don't work also that you don't even know about yet (Task Manager, regedit, Command Prompt, System Restore, etc.). The scanning softwares may not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate policy change and one made by malicious software, but you can still fix the policies after the scans. Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/They can be uninstalled later if desired.When the scans run clean, then troubleshoot any remaining issues.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

It sounds more likely that your system is infected with malicious software that has changed some policy settings on your system. You can certainly see what happens with your Safe Mode options too.If the options for the policies has been tampered with, you may not see things like Control Panel in the Start Menu and if you try to launch the Control Panel in some other fashion (like running control.exe) you will see a message like this:The operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.Is that the actual wording of the message you are really seeing?Some malicious software will disable the things it knows you might use to find and remove it to try to fool you into just giving up on actually really fixing your problem and instead, tricking you into thinking you have to do something drastic like a System Restore, Repair Install or completely reinstall your XP. You can usually just outsmart it.Since there is no Group Policy Editor in XP Home (some malicious software knows that too), you will have (and you can) to fix your afflicted policies another way, but first you need to try to be reasonably sure there is no malicious software on your system, then fix any leftovers.There could be other things that don't work also that you don't even know about yet (Task Manager, regedit, Command Prompt, System Restore, etc.). The scanning softwares may not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate policy change and one made by malicious software, but you can still fix the policies after the scans. Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/They can be uninstalled later if desired.When the scans run clean, then troubleshoot any remaining issues.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

Hello Srinivas,I was able to access the built-in Administrator account via safe mode and view control panel and user account. Thanks.No hardware change was made on the system. I'm not sure about software change. The machine is not in a domain.The problem started months back, but I didn't have time to deal with it until now. It started with the system being infected with virus (as JoseIbarra suggested). I have no idea how many nor which one now. I tried to get to control panel and user accounts at that time and couldn't.I scanned and cleaned the system with both Microsoft malicious software removal tool and another antivirus software. There are two persistent ones left, adware.purityscan and trojan.adclicker. Tried again and still couldn't see control panel and user accounts. Couldn't log in to Administrator after logging off the user account, got an error stating the Administrator account didn't exist.The user account that is having the problem appears as "Computer administrator" account type in safe mode. So it looks like the problem may very well be the virus doing.What's the best way to fix this user account?I found a couple articles on Symantec web site about the two viruses. Are there easier way to remove them?If I may respond to JoseIbarra here, yes, the message I quoted is exactly what I saw on the screen. And thanks for suggesting malicious software infection. I suspected it. But I did so many things on the machine to try to fix the virus problem and not sure if I might have done something that caused the missing control panel and user account management problem.Thanks.

Hi PJohnson, You may access the link below and follow the steps in the article to create a new user account and copy the data to the new account.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151Hope this helps. Let us know the result. Thanks and Regards, Srinivas RMicrosoft Support.Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.