If you've ever been confronted with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), you're a Windows user who has felt his heart drop.

Often, in fact, most often, Windows will boot up after all this.

But sometimes it won't.

Take my father-in-law's computer. A Dell Dimension, it's a nearly 4 years old, with never an issue besides the normal Windows maladies like spyware and viruses (UGH!), it finally got so infected (it had a good anti-virus program but it wasn't running - go figure) that it just gave up, like an old lion.

Of course, after 4 years, there's quite a bit of data on a PC, but of course, there were no backups. Whatever happened to people backing stuff up? Backing up used to be much more prevalent when backing up was so darned inconvenient (floppies or Zip drives, anyone?).

Anyway, I told him I'd try to get his data and restore his system (Windows repair utilities did not work). I couldn't get anything to work that was Windows based, even DOS-based utilities.

Before I finally giving up, I tried one last thing: A Knoppix Live CD. These are CD or DVDs that have a live OS on them. Boot up using the CD or DVD and you've got a fully-functional OS on which to perform any data recovery that may be possible.

To make a long story short, I was able to save all the data to a flash drive, reboot, and restore using the built-in PC Restore partition that Dell so smartly included.

It really was a 30 minute affair (with 25 minutes for the data copy).

If you want more helpful computer advice, visit my main site, Computer Monkeys.

10 things you should do before, during, and after reinstalling Windows | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com

1. Document your login IDs, passwords and settings
2. Export your e-mail and address book, bookmarks/favorites and cookies
3. Download the latest applications, drivers, and service packs
4. Load Windows
5. Reconfigure personal settings
6. Enable previous versions and create a ‘clean install’ restore point
7. Configure network, install service packs, patches and security updates
8. Install anti-virus and malware + firewall
   
9. Setup and configure network connection
10. Run Windows Update to scan for new drivers and updates
11. Install Service Packs
12. Create a new Restore Point
13. Reload your drivers and apps
14. Image your system!
    

The folks at Windows Secrets wrote up a fantastic piece on troubleshooting computer issues. This is a very quick read, but super-comprehensive. Take the steps Pros take when charging you $$$$$ per hour, only to find that it was a bad power supply or a registry entry run afoul.

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Often times, builders of computers, like you and me, forget or misplace our Windows product keys (you know, those 25-digit alphanumeric codes on your Windows package). When we rebuild a machine, we must use the correct product key.



Before you reformat your hard drive, make sure that you use this utility on your PC, called ProduKey, to find out the product key. Write it down or store it on a flash drive for use later when you wipe your system and reinstall Windows.



This will save you the time with Microsoft tech support, reauthorizing a known-good Windows installation.



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Like what you see here? Subscribe to Monkey Bytes, our free e-zine.



If you've ever forgotten your Windows XP administrator password, you'll find this story entertaining. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it :)



My sister wanted me to help her with some PC issues: She wanted me to set up a regular backup routing to an external hard drive of key files and folders, as well as to set up her son's iTunes music on his new Mac. There were a few other things we wanted to do, but we never did because



She couldn't remember her Windows password





This normally wouldn't be a problem. Log off, log on as administrator, open up user manager, and edit her account.



However, she was the only administrator for the PC in question.



So, what to do? The first thing we tried was different permutations of what she thought the password was. When that didn't work, we went to the web, only to find about 275,000 results for the term "lost windows xp administrator password."



Near the top of the search results was an entry, however, that looked promising. There was another that looked a little less promising, but perhaps do-able if Option #1 didn't work.



In a nutshell, option #1 did not work.



This method involved re-booting using the Windows XP installation disk and doing a Windows Repair. After about 45 minutes, we were at the point where we could enter the User Manager, change the credentials for her, and finish the "repair." However, when we attempted to access the User Manager, we were confronted with an error (and I cannot remember what that error was).



To add insult to injury, we had to let the repair finish, whereupon which the video driver had been over-written with one that was incompatible with the video card in the PC, with the effect being a display whose resolution was 640x480 with -- get this! -- 4-bit color display!!



Roxio also somehow became non-functional and we had to re-install it.



So, 1 1/2 hours later, we had not made any progress.



Option #2 was a for-pay service that we almost agreed to, but I found another, better, faster, cheaper way.



Here's the procedure:

1. Boot into Safe Mode


2. Go to User Manager (in Control Panel)


3. Create a new "admin" account (call it what you want but give it full admin rights and a password you can remember)


4. Edit the user account in question by changing its admin rights to limited user and by modifying the password


5. Re-boot


6. Good as new

So there you have it: A free, easy, and quick way to change a Windows XP admin password without knowing what it is.

CTRL + SHIFT + ESC = Task Manager