I've succeeded in tying my system up in knots and I'm hoping the good people
here can help me get unwedged.

I had a system which I thought I needed to promote to being a domain
controller using active directory. So I did that thing. It's now happily
adminstering its own domain.

But when I restarted, it wouldn't let me in. The admin password I set doesn't
work. The user password for a highly-privileged user works, but says the
account isn't allowed interactive logins. I try to log in locally, but the
only option I'm allowed is to log into the domain.

So I reboot the machine using the "Domain Controller recovery mode". That
lets me into the machine, but none of the Active Directory tools run. They
all say that the machine is running in safe mode and they're helpless.

I try to create local accounts, but they don't seem to take affect. I try to
run the "local security policy" tool and override the domain policy. I have
some success--the login screen now has the "shutdown" option as I asked,
where before it did not-- but I still can't log in as an interactive user and
the admin password is still no good.

Any thoughts as to how to get out of this mess?

Thx a billion.

Hugh