I recently purchased a refurbished computer running Windows XP. I have been using it at home. Previously, I had not set up any additional user accounts. I had been using the Administrator account as my own user account. But I wanted to set up additional accounts with limited access to resources. I set up an account called James. I had not yet learned how to limit the privileges, so James was an administrator account by default. I was going to change this later. But here is the problem: My Administrator account disappeared. It does not appear as a choice when Windows boots up. Furthermore, when I use James, I have only limited access to my resources. I had installed Microsoft Office, for example, but cannot access those programs. Furthermore, I cannot access all of my user files. What can I do? What happened to my administrator account?1 person needs an answerI do too

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:15:47 +0000, Hart Hagan wrote:I recently purchased a refurbished computer running Windows XP. I have been using it at home. Previously, I had not set up any additional user accounts. I had been using the Administrator account as my own user account. But I wanted to set up additional accounts with limited access to resources. If I acquired a used computer, no matter who previously owned it, the first thing I would do with it would be to reinstall the operating system cleanly. You have no idea how the computer has been maintained,what has been installed incorrectly, what is missing, what viruses andspyware there may be, etc. I wouldn't want to live with somebody else's mistakes and problems, possibility of kiddy p0rn, etc., and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do so either.You're playing with fire if you don't reinstall Windows cleanly.Ken Blake (MS MVP)

Try booting in Safe Mode and see if your original admin account exists there. There should also be a third admin account without password(if you wish to use this accont to sort out your problems simply hit Enter when prompted for a password) that is only accessible in Safe Mode. See below for instructions. http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx?mfr=true