Here's a handy link for the tech's

http://www.xppasswordrecovery.co.uk/

ever have some chuckle head who disabled all available accounts on the machine and forget the admin password? yeah, me too..

I ran the instructions on that site and in a few hours time, I had a password..

 

Sneaky little trick. A bit clunky and slow, but it is sneaky.

 

I actually thought it was somewhat of a time saver. While it was processing, I was able to get to other things by the time I got the password, I was all done with the other stuff and didn't need to run through some outrageous number of instructions to "hack" into the system using a linux boot disk or something.

 

It should be noted that you are sending your password file to a web site (run by strangers) for cracking. Given the means to access your computer, they have everthing they need to own it and possible every computer its networked with.

As soon as you get your admin account reset, change all IDs and passwords to accounts that may have ever logged onto that machine.

 

I agree with Freddy 100%.

 

Then smack your admin for losing the password.

 

wasn't me.. was the maintence guy being dangerous with his friends free-bee laptop.

 

http://www.winternals.com/ they have a boot disk that will actually reset the password if you boot to it. I've done it on a few systems, when there was a system error in the middle of changing a password. I also did it on a Windows 2000 Server to see if it would work on that. It did.

 

looks like you have to buy that.. But I would recommend a tool that runs locally like that.

 

yeah you do, and if I remember correctly, it's rather expensive. I had a friend that had it and he let me test it out. It is a WinPE disk, with a program called locksmith that resets any user you select's password. However, I noticed that it removes the user from the password policy, the user I used it on (test sytem) wasn't asked to change their password after the specified time had passed. I'm not sure if it works with a compressed or encrypted drive though, I never tested either configuration.