Help a Poor Mac User Repair Windows XP

I am having a nightmare repairing an XP install I have a corrupted file in windows/system32/config and I want to do a manual restore from windows/repair, but I do not know the admin password.

Is there anyway around this difficulty?

Thanks,
kirindor

 

This link may help.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

 

Thanks for the link. I know exactly what files that I need to move about to perform a manual system restore. I just can't get access to the disk through the windows Restore when I boot from the CD b/c no one in that office knows the Admin password.

I have a documents and settings back up and could re-install but it is an off-brand machine with no drivers, and I really hate to hunt down the drivers if I can work around the Admin password.

It seems like there should be a work around, maybe a Linux boot CD, but I don't think Linux reads NTFS??

kirindor.

 

Most of the newer Linux Distro's will read NTFS but won't write to a NTFS partition.

This tool will help you with Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

 

depends on which distro you are using..... last i checked suse could read and write to ntfs.... but it took some major tweaking

 

lookup a boot disk called cia commander, it will reset the local admin password for you provided you can boot to floppy.

 

That link has a NTFS read and write module in it, which lets you edit the NTFS filesystem, most notably the registry hives. If its XP, then that is almost certain to work!

 

Here is the solution that worked!!

I put another hard drive in, slaved the original, and installed XP on the new HD.

This allowed me access to the original hardrive and bypassed the need for the original passwords. I then did a manual restore on the original disk. Then I booted from the original disk and the computer works once again.

Thanks for the help.