Password recovery

There are Linux boot disks that have DOS and NTFS filesystem drivers and software that will read the registry and rewrite the password hashes for any account including the Administrators. It is as simply as:

shutdown or turnoff the PC
put the book disk in the PC and reboot
respond to the Linux prompts
the highest barrier is understanding unix media descriptors
select the account whose password hash needs to be rewritten & enter a new password
reboot & access using the new password
This process requires physical access to the console and an available floppy drive.

The following site provides the downloadable boot disk image, image to disk utility, source code, and supporting documentation: Offline NT password utility. This version can disable syskey protect. They do note that turning off syskey under Windows 2000 damages the SAM and is not to be attempted except as a last resort to reinstallation. Watch for updates.

See Analysis of Alleged Vulnerability in Windows 2000 Syskey and

Take a look here...works with NT, 2k and XP:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/editor.html

Delete any spaces in the URL.
Good luck....hope this helps!

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