Petter Nordahl-Hagen has written a Windows NT/2000/XP offline password editor:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd
This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system, by modifying the encrypted password in the registry's SAM file.
You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppy disk or CD. The boot-disk includes stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.
Works with syskey (no need to turn it off, but you can if you have lost the key)
Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!
Caution: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or later service packs on W2K, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again!
Download links:
bd040818.zip (~1.1MB) - Bootdisk image, date 040818
cd040818.zip (~1MB) - SCSI-drivers (040818) (only use newest drivers with newest bootdisk, this one works with bd040818)
sc040818.zip (~2MB) - Bootable CD image with same version and drivers as floppies above.
To write these images to a floppy disk you'll need Raw Write, Win Image or any other writing software you want.
Support and Problems? Don't call me! Talk to the creator of this great tool. He also has a good FAQ set up covering most of the day-to-day questions. Read it right HERE
