Windows 2000 - password corrupted???

End tasking a program restarted the computer and seems to have corrupted the Admin password....

I was fighting a recalcitrant program on our computer in the administrator account. It hung, so I end tasked from Task Manager. Usual next step, "this program is not responding," so I okayed closing it. Tried to restart the program, no response, so I thought I'd missed clicking the start menu shortcut and tried again. Still no response, so then I got wise, checked the Task Manager and sure enough, it hadn't closed it properly the first time and now there were three instances of the program there. I set about ending them all and had no trouble with the first one but the second (or maybe third, I've forgotten) had an unexpected result. The computer suddenly restarted and when it got to the login box, it wouldn't accept my administrator password, claiming it is wrong. Now we changed that password only recently (late June) and have used it since successfully and there is no way it's wrong. I double-checked it with the son who did the actual change as well.

Bad news is, it's the only administrator account on this computer. Good news is, if we absolutely can't get the password problem sorted out, at least we have access to everything except a couple of unneeded system folders (left over from an update) and can back up and reinstall. Just don't want to do that because it will take SO-O-O-O long.

I've been trying to figure out the 3 main offerings that I have found here for getting a new password but I can't figure out what to do with them.

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

Maybe I'm just totally thick at the moment but I just don't seem able to find my way through any of those. And if I do manage to get one of them worked out, I wonder if it will help anyway, since the password seems to have been corrupted, not lost or forgotten.

So is there something else I should be doing, since it's obviously some kind of corruption? And if you are sure one of those programs will work, perhaps someone can explain the ISO to USB without a CD burner or whichever you think will be best for us.

Windows 2000 Pro
Dell Optiplex GX240
Program was a program that came with a USB voice recorder that we picked up off eBay for uni lectures.

Thanks people.

 

If this is a work pc will they pay a few $ for the solution (not to me)?

 

Sadly, Studiot, it's our own machine so the problem remains ours.

Info that might be relevant that I didn't give, (while I try again after a night's sleep to see if I can make sense of the links in my previous post) the file system is NTFS and the user account I am in has full control over all the folders... although I notice that I still run into access denied issues.

 

Well, it's wonderful what a good night's sleep and less on your mind will do for you... I was partway through a 24 hour period (when I wasn't sleeping which was less than I'd like ) of keeping track of my three boys' various activities (including the overnight LAN that had me up late), where they had to be when, which friends to pick up and deliver where, etc. and had had a very frustrating time prior to losing admin access with the device I use for lectures.

I can now smile and laugh :-D about my troubles and "pack them up in my old kit bag."

I used: http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

I finally figured out where to find the ISO zip, how to get an ISO onto a CD (using a burning program on another machine that hides the fact that it can burn ISOs) and got the thing up and running.

Turned out that the password may not have changed but our admin account was disabled and locked out, claiming 2 incorrect password attempts with a limit of 0 attempts. So I re-enabled, unlocked, blanked the password and we're in! You can bet I'll be keeping that CD handy in case we run into any future problems.

And so much for a useless, poorly explained hacking method that I found while I was trying to find a solution - should have known better... straight to Major Geeks to research before googling. :-D

 

WOW, I'd assume anything greater than 0 is needed for a log in attempt. I type my password wrong at email sites sometimes. I'd hate to be locked out because I'd need to get it correct the first time or else.