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Administrator Password for XP

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9 replies

by jsnowbunny100

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I was given a laptop with Win 2000. I can only log on as a guest user with the password I was given.

I need to have The Administrator password to install other programs.

If I install Win XP, will I be able to install a new password for the Administrator or will I have to format the hard drive and start from scratch.

Thanks

9 replies

by lmayeda

If we can assume that the person who gave you the laptop had administrative priveleges, then you could log on as that person, create a new user and allow the new user admin rights.

by jsnowbunny100

No, the person who gave me the computer only had user rights. If they had had the admin password, they would have given it to me.

by w2ktechman

Upgrading to XP is just that, an upgrade, but you still will not have admin permissions. You need to log in as someone with Admin permissions in order to get admin permissions. The best way is as the first answer stated. If this cannot be done, then you may need to format/reinstall

by haileyan

If you re-install Windows XP you WILL be able to change the admin password during the install. You may, however, also have to re-install any applications that exist on the laptop.

by phan

There was software from www.download.com that you can get to reset the Administrator password.
Please look for "Passware Password".
You can download it and try but on your own risk as the previous password can't be recover again.
Good luck.

by abdrcjames

Reboot into safe mode, when in safe mode go to user accounts, delete the existing password on the admin account. It was way too easy, I got a desktop with xp pro installed with no admin rights, F8 to safe mode and change the user accounts as desired. Reboot into normal and you have your rights back. Not very safe XP.

by black_eyed_pea

First, try logging in as Administrator with no password. Also try iterations of the words password and Administrator: password, Password, P@ssw0rd, password1, Password!, Administrator, administrator, Adm1n1str@tor, etc. It seems stupid, but many adminstrator passwords are easily breakable.

If the Win 2000 installation has a FAT32 boot partition, you can reset the password with a Win98 boot disk. Boot to DOS with the boot disk and delete the SAM file in the \windows\system32\config folder. If you delete it, you'll delete all local users with it. Also, any files and folders that were encrypted with those local accounts will be unrecoverable. After deleting the SAM file, you can logon as Administrator using a blank password.

Finally, there is a great utility that will work with both Win2K and WinXP. It is the NT Offline Password Recovery tool. Go here to learn more:

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

The actual utility can be downloaded at this URL:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/cd040818.zip

On a computer with a CD burner, double-click the .iso file and it will create a bootable CD for you.

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