Hi there,

New to the forum! I was wondering if anyone can help? My friend was online using a file sharing program and someone hacked into his pc (I think) did something to registry and changed the administrator password so he now can't log in!!!

I tried using Offline NT Password & Registry Editor to change the Adminstrator password and although it said it was successful I am still getting the following error at startup "The system cannot logon due to the following error: The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted".

Is there any way this can be fixed without reformatting???

Thanks so much for any suggestions!!!

Hello originalwitty, and welcome to the PCHF!

This probably should be able to be fixed without formatting.

Basically, it's asking to join a network domain, controlled by a server, that it can't find. Normally people who use laptops at work and at home are able to do this fairly easily...but some people aren't aware that it's different.

When you first turn the laptop on, it should come up saying "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to logon". Once you've pressed that it should come up asking for a username and password...lets say username = Administrator and password = abcd1234

Once you type these in, you should get the message you have recieved earlier, "cannot log you onto the domain" and you press OK, it will take you back to the logon screen - but you should see a small difference. It should have a 3rd option, labelled Domain.

If this is the case, you should have 2 selections...1 is whatever it's trying to log into at the moment, and 2nd should be computername (this computer).

Change it to that one, and you should be able to get into windows.