Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

administrator password

0 helpful
14 replies

by benjaminedmond

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
i have a laptop the problem is thati've for gotten the administratorn password so i can't get access to the infos i need? what can i do?

14 replies

by choonhian

1. Install a parallel copy of the OS, in say c:\winnt.2nd
2. Login to your second OS (newly installed version)
3. Browse to your 1st OS folder (c:\winnt\system32)
4. rename logon.scr to logon.bak
5. copy cmd.exe to logon.scr
6. reboot to 1st OS, wait for say 15 minutes and a command prompt will popup.
7. start usrmgr to reset your administrator password.

The above will work because windows automatically start logon.scr screen saver after some idle time at the login screen.

by vagab0nd

Hi,

First of all - answer 3 is wrong, you'll spend a lot of time just to find that there's user manager in W2K :)
So here is the short list of tools that will help:

1. ERD commander by Winternals.com - great tool that is an enchanced version of Recovery Console. May be written on bootable CD and provides you with a lot of abilities. One of them is changing password for any local user. Price is something about $150. You may also find cracked version in Internet, but you know it's not goodto do so.
2. Locksmith by Winternals.com (these guys know what they do) - tool for changing admin password exclusevly, also not free.
3. L0phtcrack. The current version is LC3 and you can get it from http://www.atstake.com. L0pht developed the best NT password carcking utility to date. It is a GUI driven program that is pretty strait forward. The unregistered version is limited to 30 days and can only perform the most basic of cracking techniques (dictionary attack) until is is registered. If you know where to look, you can find a crack to register it for you.
4. This one is a boot disk which boots a linux sheel to modify registry settings. If you have never used Linux before, don't worry because all you have to do is select the defaults for everything all the way up to changing the password. It allows you to change any local user account password, and you don't need to know it. The instructions for making the boot disk and running the utility can be found at http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html. This utility is completely free, no gimmicks, no limitations. (Thanx to ninet4 for submitting this one).

Any of these will help - choose the one you like most.
Good luck,
Vagab0nd

by rob

Don't know what OS you have. If it's NT4.0 or W2K with a FAT partition you can boot from a boot disk rename the logon.scr and copy cmd.exe to logon.scr reboot and wait for the screen saver to start. Then it will display a command promt and you canuse a net commmand ( NET USER ADMINISTRATOR ) close the window and log in with that password. It works I've done it.

by curious_george

If all you need is the info, move the drive, as a second drive, to a second system that has a primary os drive(there are laptop IDE hard drive cable adapters available everywhere). Then just access the files you need. NTFS permissions may need to be reset in order to access the info. Since you are looking for administrator access I'll assume you do not have any EFS running on the laptop.

This discussion is closed to new replies.