my sony vaio

[citrus]

Bacically bought a laptop off dabs instead of direct from sony (big mistake).

My laptop came with aload of rubbish on it free trials site shortcuts etc.

but that wasnt the problem. When i log in i am listed as an admin which is good but not good enough. When i wanted to change some more indepth settings it wouldnt let me do it such as anything in microsoft management console. I first noticed the problem when i couldnt use the windows side bar thing. Searched a few forums went into micro management to try to fix the soloution and it said i wasnt the admin. Since then i have found other restrictiions, and it saying the same thing. Rang up sony themselfs they just had me reset it to its factory settings, which was no help at all cus obviously the laptop just went back to the way it was when i first got it. But when i did do a system restore i noticed when you turn the laptop on for the first time it logs you in to what seems to be the administrator with the default windows background and the name administrator as the log in. But this was only active for a brief ten seconds. When the computer reset itself the admin login wasnt available it wanted you to create a new login and when the new login was created you could then make yourself the administrator (or not). I think ive found a soloution myself but its gonna cost me some money, so any other advice would be brilliant. Basically i want to format the laptop (the hard drive is partitioned by the way dont know if that makes a difference),and not a system restore either i want the whole shibang and then the plan is to buy a new copy of windows home premium and then download all the drivers and utilities from sony themselfs which i reacently descovered i can do. Ive had the laptop for about 6 months now and its just been a struggle with the whole thing. And seeing as i bought the laptop i want full control of it cus i think thats fair.

[Tootech]

If you really need to, open a command prompt with admin rights, then type

 

net user administrator /active:yes

 

followed by Enter

 

Log off and you will see your account and the Administrator account.

 

To reverse this type

 

net user administrator /active:no

[Dalo Harkin]

Have you contacted DABS about this?

you need to call them as opposed to Sony and tell DABS the issues you are having.

 

As you have had the PC 6 months, you may have left it a little too late to get them to actually do anything.

 

let me look into this more.

[citrus]

yeh havnt tried the cp dont know much in that area, ille give that a razz.

dabs didnt really say anything they seemed to avoid the situation i emailed them several times, gave up on that so i rang them and they gave me the same response that sony did, but i did notice how many times they put me on hold so i think its an issue with alot of people and i get the feeling they know exactly what im talking about. When i got the laptop it came with google desktop intead of wndows sidebar and loads of other rubbish that microsoft had already created, but they had disababled these and put a cruddy program in its place so i think there contracted down somewhere. thanks for the response guys, i tell ya some forums are just dead and a waste of time

[citrus]

surprise surprise. access denied :(

[Tootech]

You will get an access denied error if you don't run cmd as Administrator.

 

Start>cmd

 

Before you press Enter, look up and CMD prompt will be listed at the top of the menu.

 

Move your mouse up to it and right click. Select 'Run As Administrator' and try again.

[citrus]

ok so when i tried logging in and changing a setting i got this

Why won't Windows allow me to change a system setting?

 

If your computer is part of a network at an organization such as a school, government agency, or a business, your organization's system administrator might have disabled or even removed certain settings by using Group Policy. Group Policy is a feature of Windows that lets system administrators manage users' access to Windows features. If you suspect that Group Policy is preventing you from changing a setting that you need to access, contact your system administrator.

If your computer is not part of a network, a user with administrator privileges might have modified Group Policy on your computer to remove access to the settings. In this case, contact the users who are administrators on your computer to modify the settings you'd like to change.

 

 

tried logging in as admin like you said that worked, but the just got the same thing :(

[Plastic Nev]

Hi Citrus, I get the impression that this DABS where you bought it, have somehow installed an administration account over ruling anything you may do. This looks to me like an unscrupulous type of way to force you to take it back to them for repair every time there is a fault.

There is a possibility that a new system recovery disk direct from Sony may kill that off, but only worth a try if they send one at no cost to you.

Give that a try and let us know how you get on.

[Dalo Harkin]

You need to call DABS and go mental - I do feel that they have hidden the entry to the BIOS as you cannot completely remove it.

F2 and F3 are generally to get into the BIOS on Vaio's, but you need to tell DABS that you are 'not very happy at all'