I was frustrated with somewhat slow performance of my computer and was beginning to do some "cleaning" up with add/remove programs, even running this add/remove utility was run slow so I turned off my computer, thinking that will reset the slowness. Boy did I mess up!! When I turned my computer back on, not only would windows not start (I was expecting at least checkdisk), but it wouldn't even run in Safe Mode . After many many tries of turning off and on. I found out I had a: windows root>\system 32\hal.dll file missing...thought it would be on my system restore disk (where windows XP home OS software was stored) but when I inserted the disk in the diskdrive, it automatically went into full restore mode and reformatted my entire hard drive!!! My wife convinced me to get a new desktop computer with more memory (I maxed out of my old one) and a faster chip. Which I did on Tuesday and had a 3 week old back-up of files that I mostly restored, so I am almost back to "normal" (3 weeks ago).
But one problem...I use Microsoft Money 2003 (version 11.0) a lot and when I tried to restore the most recent backup file...it is password protected. I tried all the passwords I ever used, none of them work. When I used Money on my old computer (before crashed), the password field was automatically populated...I really don't want to loose 5 years of transactional data on Microsoft Money and would really like to try and recover my password so I can restore the backup transaction file...
When I reinstalled Money 2003 on my new computer, the login screen requests the .NET passport sign-in name and password to access the (new) Money file...when I type in my passport password Money did open no problem...HOWEVER there is no data (new file). Once Money is open, I use the file-restore backup feature. I choose the restore from a backup file Then it searches for available backups. I choose one NOT on the "C" drive and Money searches for .mbf files...I choose the most recent of these and then when password is asked for, I use the SAME password I used for .NET passport file. I get the "The password you entered was incorrect. Please try again" error.
Any suggestions?
