I have an old HP which was powered off during a system restore by a careless user.  I have his XP CD, and started the Recovery Console with no problems.  However, I'm prompted for an Administrator Password.  I tried enter, and I tried admin, but the system says those are incorrect passwords.  Can anyone help - please - soon - please?  Thanks.Your best bet...other than a clean install would be to start here:  Forgot Administrator PasswordThanks very much, Saviour.  I've sent the encrypted password to loginrecovery.com - and I guess I'll wait the three days to get the free decryption service.  I'll be very interested to see if that works.  I'll post results here Monday, assuming I do get the decrypted info.

Thanks again.You're welcome...please, do keep us posted...For Saviour:

Sorry this took so long.  The loginrecovery.com site posted the administrator decrypted password (BLANK), just as promised, after exactly 72 hours.  Unfortunately, this didn't work, as I suspected would be the case, since there was no reason for a password to be there.  I was able to read both the system partition, and the recovery partition, of the affected machine, by booting from the Windows CD.  I tried a new bootloader file, and a new MBR file, but to no avail.  It appears that I will have no choice but to reinstall Windows (from a new copy purchased by the user, since he failed to acquire, or build, the Recovery disks for his 4 year old HP machine).  After that, I suppose I'll get an inventory of the machine using Belarc Adviser, and try to locate DRIVERS for his various hardware devices.

I would appreciate any alternative suggestions.Have you tried slaving his drive and scanning it for infections (malware)?

This may be the best alternate route you have...and could also be the culprit.Saviour:
Yes - I set his drive up as a slave in one of my machines, and determined that the drive was mechanically okay.  I did not scan the drive for malware (since the user had confessed he pulled the plug in the middle of a Windows System Restore; and because I was concerned with trying to repair his installation).  However, as a precaution prior to attempting repair, I used Tru-Image software to make an image of both the system and recovery partitions.  Right now, I'm installing a new copy of  Windows on the system partition, leaving the recovery partition alone.  My thought is, if I can get the thing to boot from the system drive, I may be able to invoke HP's System Recovery mechanism, and at least put the user back to the point of purchase.  Your suggestion, however, appears to be a good one.  When I have time, I'll scan the original files, which I have already copied from the Tru-Image backup to an EXTERNAL hard drive here.  If you're interested, I'll post results of all this.
Thanks for your suggestion.

Update:  windows installed without incident.  However, the plan to use HP's System Restore was not to be.  When I press the appropriate execution KEY during the boot process, nothing happens.  So, looks as though the user is going to be stuck with an expensive lesson in what he should have, and should not have, done.Why not contact HP for the recovery software...if any.  Maybe explain to them the recovery partition was damaged before the recovery cd could be made.

Hopefully, they could send you the recovery software...much cheaper than purchasing the XP cd itself.Disregard my LAST post...he's already purchased the CD...Well - that was my first step in this process.  HP advised they only kept the disks or whatever for a couple of years, and this machine is 4 years old.  My hope was that HP had built into the BIOS some means of recognizing the user's pressing of the F10 key at a particular point early in the boot cycle, and launch the recovery program from the recovery partition.  But I suppose that it's more likely that program was part of the system drive installation.  

This user - like so many computer users who call me, never looked at his system documentation, or at least he didn't look at that section which dealt with making or ordering recovery disks, until it was too late.  Personally, I think it's criminal for box makers to ship PCs without a reinstallation disk.  How much could that cost?  And how many persons would at least have an opportunity to recover from a calamitous event if they only had reinstallation disk(s).