Can't login to laptop

[Stingray2U]

Here's a tough one: A laptop running Win 2k Pro was used on a domain at a large company. The user changed the "Member of" domain to workgroup then restarted the computer. Now at the login there is no domain choice. And unfortunately there is no local computer access as the IT department has no record of this computer or the administrator password. I can't get into the computer to put it back on the domain. I installed Win 98 and can access the hard drive.
Is there a way to change a file in the WINNT directory to make the computer log into the old domain? Or is there a way to get Win 2k to do this from the login prompt? Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks

Stingray2U

 

[jrbarnett]

If you can access the hard drive under Win98, you can copy the SAM from C:\Winnt\Config\Sam file and run it through a password cracker on a spare PC to get the local administrator password.

The SAM file contains all the local user account information and access rights, so is the crown jewels of NT/Win2K/XP security.

John

 

[tlcscousin]

Have you tried the laptop at the logon screen logon as the user at the domain and the password.
user@domain
password

 

[ricpinto]

Yeah I agree with you it's tough but it can be done.. Anyway what'your point if you can get all your files in that harddisk.

 

[Stingray2U]

Thanks for the first two tips. I'll give those a try.

As for ricpinto, my point is how to get back on Win 2k. I didn't say I was trying to get the files off the hard disk. All important files should be on the server. I'll have to assume you were asking cause you didn't understand. The point is that I don't have the Win 2k installation disk and it's my friend's boss' laptop. She wanted to have it back in working order by Monday. I am trying to help her be able to log back onto Win 2k. Otherwise, IT will just have to reinstall the OS.

Thanks again guys.

Stingray2U

 

[ricpinto]

Now I understand .

Try this site:

http://www.ee.princeton.edu/~xzhu/win2k.html

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

It's a good reference if you can't make it on Monday/Today.

 

[atreubin]

Stingray2U, have you found a solution to the problem? I did the same thing and I have found that this is a very common problem since it's very easy to do and impossible to undo.
I have found multiple threads on exactly the same problem. Unfortunately, I don't think they got much further. Here are the URLS:
1) thread616-524307 thread616-547389 thread616-73739 thread616-280454 far as I can tell, what has happened is that by changing the setting from a domain to a workgroup and not supplying a user and password, we have set W2K to boot without a valid login username. Thus, either there is no valid username, in which case there's absolutely no way of getting past the logon screen, or the only valid username is some default that is given when you set W2K to use workgroups.

If the former is the case, then as far as I have heard, there's no way around it. . . you have to reinstall the OS. If it's the latter, then we have to either figure out what the default is, or else reinstall.

Does this make sense? I am also really frustrated and have done this to a system that has a lot of valuable information that I don't want to lose in a reinstall.

I'd appreciate any help.

 

[Stingray2U]

Hey atreubin,

Well unfortunately, I can't give you much help. I ended up reinstalling a fresh copy of Win2k. I did however install Win 98 just before that so I had no problem accessing all the files on the drive. It started up as a duel boot. You may want to try something like that to get to the files. The plus with an older non-NT Windows is that it saves all the system files in a folder called Windows rather than WINNT. So both can happily coexist on the same drive. The Windows 9x installer should update the boot loader so that it will be duel bootable. From there, get all your files and then start over with a clean install of Win2k.

And for anyone following this thread, all went well with my friend's boss. He didn't notice anything anyway. All their stuff is saved on the server anyway. Thanks.

Stingray2U

 

[atreubin]

Hi Stingray2U,
Thanks for the advice. I was ready to use a program to recover/change the password with a boot disk, but I fortunately found that the local user "ADMINISTRATOR" and blank password worked for me.
I'm not sure if that is a default that Win 2000 sets when you first switch to Workgroups or if it was set up on my machine when Win 2000 was installed (I didn't install it), but anyway, I got really lucky!

Anyone else following this thread or having the same problem might want to try it in the possibility that this ADMINISTRATOR account is actually a W2K default. In any case, I'm pretty sure that there's absolutely no way of getting around the problem without
a) having a local username and password
b) reinstalling the OS
c) using software to compromise W2K security

Hope this helps and thanks again to Stingray2U.