Recover Password windows 2003 server

Before anyone yells and says similar subject has been posted before, hear me out.

I have been working at this problem for at least 6 hours... am going crazy.

here's the scenario:

I have a host pc which runs windows 2003 server , and has virtual server 2005 R2 installed on it. this pc hosts many guest machines (virtual machines).

One of these virtual machines has windows 2003 installed on it, and for some reason, one of the developers seems to have changed the administrator password and forgot it or misplaced it . Now we are stuck in front of this server, which can not be formated, without access to it. It is not a member of a domain.

I tried many software and solutions, all of them linux based. you have to boot from them, and it just shows your the password or you change it (depending on the software's design), but it kept hanging at a point with the error:
Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill ide task! (why is it shocked i do not know)

anyway, i found somewhere that maybe lowering the memory would help, i set it on 128, 512, 1GB ... didnt work.

so it seems that linux doesnt work properly with virtual machines under virtual server 2005, or am missing smthn.

Please if anyone can help.. am running against walls here.

oh and btw: reformat is not an option.

P.S: attached image link of the errorhttp://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8483/linuxerror.png

Thank you
Wassim

 

Hello.

Have you tried using an ERD? (Emergency Rescue Disk) Basically its a Windows Version of a Linux Boot disk, and that way you can go in and change your password. Might work.

Best of luck,.

 

am actually downloading now the ERD commander to give it a shot, but since am in the middle east... our connection is quite bad... which might take a day or 2 to finish the download, meanwhile am hunting more options and alternatives just in case this doesnt solve the problem...

 

Yeah. Thats really all I know of, and use.

Best of luck, hope someone can give more clarity for this.

 

Hi

thanks btw for the reply.. and lets hope this erd commander is actually compatible with windows 2003 server , from what i heard microsoft bought it and its not the diagnostics and smthn tool...

if not i guess i will keep nagging

thnx
Wassim

 

great news, problem solved. the erd commander was able to boot, password changed, all's well

thnx and best of luck

WK :major