Help I locked myself out of XP (GPEDIT permissions)

[Anarchi]

Please help, I was changing user settings in GPEDIT.MSC so I could limit access to certain applications for non-Administrator users.

Now I am totally locked out of XP!

I can login to Administrator, but I cannot run any programs at all except for a few games. I cannot access MyComputer, Run, gpedit.msc, nothing!

I didnt know Microsoft made it so Administrator was locked out as well! That seems a bit silly.


I have dual booted into Vista at the moment and have access to the XP partition / files.

Is there a way to recover XP?



Now perhaps I can fool XP. I know the executable that is allowed to run (its a game that runs MAIN.EXE).
Can I copy and rename GPEDIT.MSC to MAIN.EXE in the game folder? So when I run the "game" it runs GPEDIT instead?
(EDIT: I tried this, but XP removed the icon from the Desktop! lol it knew the exe was fake)

[Anarchi]

omg what a nightmare, i finally removed the restrictions

I tried BartPE, loading the hives of XP's registry offline but couldnt find the appropriate settings.

I ended up simply booting XP and logging into my usual username (who has admin rights), and going into control panel -> Users, and enabling the Guest Account.

In the guest account I had access to most things, but still had limited access ( as a normal guest account has). I searched for GPEDIT.MSC and made a shortcut on the Desktop, then right clicked the shortcut and selected "Run As", then entered the Administrator username and password. Voila! GPEDIT loaded and I disabled most settings I enabled (restricted) previously. Then I logged onto my usual User Account and was able to run everything again

3 hours later lol...