OS login and HD not showing up

Alright my geeky friends -- I need you to come to my rescue.

I've been working on getting a computer up and running for my friend's mom. We ALMOST had it Saturday night and then I made a mistake.


It's on a machine running Win2000 (she basically only needs it for word processing and photos...). The HD with the OS I stole from a machine I fixed up earlier for my little sister. As I was doing the final details, I went to delete the user profile she had as there was no reason to keep it. After a required restart, I can no longer login. There's apparently still an admin user on there and I wasn't smart enough to write that down.

QUESTION 1!

Is there any way to get in without knowing that username? Or somehow accesss a command prompt without login to create a new user with a command?

So far the only solution I've found is to reinstall the OS...ugh.

Yeah, sometimes I am not that smart...

QUESTION 2!

I took the HD out of her old computer and put it in a case to act as an external drive so that she can get her docs and photos. It was running Win3.1. Haha. When I plug it in, I get the normal pop up icon from the taskbar saying it's found new hardware and whatnot, and it shows in device manager, but it won't show in explorer or disk management. What's going on? I have no idea and I don't know how to access her files to pull them over to the new comp. (Oh, and it works if I plug it in as a master drive -- 3.1 starts right up. Haha)

Any ideas/help appreciated.

 

Hello There,

For your Q2 I don't think windows 3.1 supports external hard drives.

 

After Windows loads, try Ctrl-Alt-Del, and tap delete twice. This usually brings up the Administrator account.

-OR-


Boot up, and F8 into safe mode, and it should show the Administrator. Unless it has been password protected, you should have no problem logging in.