Admin Password Recovery

whitelightrider

Folks,

Is there any way to recover an administrators password in XP?
Boss handed me her laptop yesterday where her son managed to change the admin password and now cant remember it.

Karoma

Reset: http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

whitelightrider

Karoma wrote: »

Reset: http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Nice one Karoma. Ill give that a shot later. Thanks for that.

Capt'n Midnight

password reset is OK
because you if you have physical access you can bypass windows security by putting the drive in another PC or installing a second copy or booting off a CD so the window password doesn't protect anything apart from encrypted files.



password recovery is a no-no ,
because it's not needed (see above) and because people use passwords for other things too.

whitelightrider

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

password reset is OK
because you if you have physical access you can bypass windows security by putting the drive in another PC or installing a second copy or booting off a CD so the window password doesn't protect anything apart from encrypted files.



password recovery is a no-no ,
because it's not needed (see above) and because people use passwords for other things too.

Hiya Capt'n. Basically she needs to have the Administrator password reset. Her son set it to something more "secure" and now has no idea what it is so I got handed it this morning!!! Just need to reset the Administrator password to something she can remember and give it back to her.

Capt'n Midnight

no problem and have used that disk many a time, just read the menus , and Bobs your uncle.



I'm just trying to pre-empt some idiot who hasn't read the charter posting a password cracking link. :mad:


IIRC you could achieve the same result by restoring a previous SAM but that's messier and way more work.

whitelightrider

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

no problem and have used that disk many a time, just read the menus , and Bobs your uncle.



I'm just trying to pre-empt some idiot who hasn't read the charter posting a password cracking link. :mad:


IIRC you could achieve the same result by restoring a previous SAM but that's messier and way more work.

Capt'n, Ive been trying this all weekend but cant get the laptop to boot from the CD. Ive hit F12 and said boot from CD, but it defaults straight to Windows.

Any ideas?

Capt'n Midnight

check the laptop boots from another cd , if not check BIOS settings ( yes F12 should work but ... )

you could try a usb floppy if you have one too

check the cd boots on another PC , don't forget you don't just copy the file to the CD you need something like cdburn (microsoft) or other cd burning program to generate a bootable cd,

whitelightrider

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

check the laptop boots from another cd , if not check BIOS settings ( yes F12 should work but ... )

you could try a usb floppy if you have one too

check the cd boots on another PC , don't forget you don't just copy the file to the CD you need something like cdburn (microsoft) or other cd burning program to generate a bootable cd,

You are the man! It worked perfectly. Man this is gona look good tomorrow.
Thanks so much Capt'n and crew.

ToxicPaddy

I hate when that happens, had a former boss who used to give his company laptop to his 10 year old daughter to chat on MSN as she didnt like sitting in the room where the PC was cause it had no TV in it!!!!! :rolleyes:

Needless to say she managed to turn off the firewall and disable the AV "cause it was stopping her downloading cool stuff"!!!

Then he wondered why it kept crashing when he was in meetings etc.. after 5 OS reinstalls in 6 months I had enough and told him its fecked and he needed a new laptop, this one was only 6 months old.. cost him nearly €2.5k for that one.. it soon made him stop and it was magically repaired!!

Anyway back on topic, used that tool a few times and its never left me down..

Tox

G-TAC

Hi All,
I am using this program to try and reset the password on my brothers computer. One of his daughters set a password on it and cannot remember it. I can get to where it lists the users and it shows Administrator and Guest. Problem is when the computer boots normaly there is only one user on the log in screen (elaine) and that user does not appear on the list in the reset programme.

Am I missing somthing? Is there a way to activate the Administrator account so it will show on the log in screen?

Many Thanks,
Martin.

Loveless

At the login screen press CTRL + ALT + (DELETE twice), ie. hold down Control + ALT keys and press the DELETE button twice.

This will give you the 'Classic' Windows logon which will allow you to type in the username that you want to logon on as.

G-TAC

Loveless wrote: »

At the login screen press CTRL + ALT + (DELETE twice), ie. hold down Control + ALT keys and press the DELETE button twice.

This will give you the 'Classic' Windows logon which will allow you to type in the username that you want to logon on as.

Thanks for that. I can get the login screen up but even after using the software to reset the password to [blank] Windows in all its wisdom tells me "Unable to log you on because of account restriction"

Anything else?
And I do appreciate it.

Fysh

One of the attributes that can be set for any account (and changed with that bootable disk) is whether the account is disabled. If you haven't already, it's worth checking this as in Vista the built-in Administrator account is disabled by default as a security measure.

G-TAC

Fysh wrote: »

One of the attributes that can be set for any account (and changed with that bootable disk) is whether the account is disabled. If you haven't already, it's worth checking this as in Vista the built-in Administrator account is disabled by default as a security measure.

Yeah I went through the following settings, Clear user password, Edit user password and Unlock and enable user account. The listing for the account shows that the account is not disabled there is no x in the [ ] and even tells me when I go to enable it that it seems to be unlocked already.

Thanks,
Martin.

G-TAC

Sorted it. Somtimes the solution is easier then it seems.
But best not to post it.
Thanks lads for your help.
Martin.