Admin password crack on XP Pro

A friend of mine has a machine that is in desperate need of some virus scan stuff. So I take the machine home to fix, plug it into my network (they are on dial up currently) and find out that the machine is a hacked version of XP home. By hacked I don't mean pirated, I mean like when big companies buy like tons of software and can have microsoft edit parts of it. Like right now the person's profile is running limited but is allowed to install software. That is bad because while spyware and viri can install they do not have to power to uninstall. On top of all of this the LAN settings are set for some kind of special network and without the admin password I can't reset them to my TCP/IP settings. Any ideas on how the hell I can get the admin password?

 

Yes,
Ask the Admin :booger

 

Got to ask the obvious question.

Is this still owned by the company that added the odd Windows install?

If so, hacking the Admin password would be illegal and the only way out is to give it to the companies IT dept and ask them to clean it up.

If not then the copy of Windows may be illegal unless your friend made sure to buy the licence when he bought the PC off the company. In this case your best answer is still to contact the company it was bought from, ask for the Admin password (since it should have been supplied when the PC was bought).

A little more info would be helpful though (I realise there are situations where contacting the company you bought it from may be impossible).

 

hehe, if you are looking for pwd cracking tools this ain't obviously the place..
Why don't you google with keywords like " forgot your Windows administrator's password", there are tons of doc to retrieve..

 

The company that used to own the laptop is a pro ball team, so I am pretty sure that the OS is not illegal. Also the guy that set these machines up has long since quit and no one at the company knows the password. The computer was given to my friend when he left as part of the severance package, so yes he does own it. They have it set up like NT with the login screen so I didn't know if I could use the linux live CD I use most of the time that actually goes in and deletes the registry entry for the password. I have no problems doing this on my personal machines because if I do that and then the machine won't boot I have no one to blame but me, this is not for me so I am looking for something a little better.

My reason for posting here is because I know there are tons of articles out there but I figured you guys had done something like this a few times and could point me to a method that has worked for you in the past.

 

get that stuff and let us know if it's what you expected <snip>

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4138.html



support your local website, please.

-Mod

 

if you boot up through safe mode you should be able to change the admin password.

 

Hi FishFool59. Thanks for the extra info, I thought it best to ask because since Christmas there seems to have been someone asking for advice on how to break copyright etc daily here. Difficult situation though, could be worth asking if there is a standard admin password (if you haven't, I prefer starting with the easy method ;-) )?

I'm pretty sure there are people here who can help guide you through, I would start by looking at manmachines suggested software and other programs in the same area of MG (can't suggest myself as I can't access the downloads at work).

 

I had to reset the Admin password on one of my computers recently. I went to http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ and got a boot disk. Worked like a charm.