forgot admin password 1

[gben]

Folks, I have just come back from a local computer bookstore and browsed all the XP books available. But I just couldn't find any mentioning of how to reset the password for the admin account on XP professional.

The books only tell you how to recover forgotten passwords using hint and the password recovery disk. If you don't have any hint or the disk, the books suggest that you ask your admin to reset it for you.

But the question is what if this is a personal computer whose owner forgot the admin password?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[POSGuy]

Can you log into the system with any other account? If so, check to see if that user has administrative rights. If that user account does, you can goto computer management, local users and groups, right click on the Administrator user and select set password. You should not be prompted for the old password.

Hope this helps

 

[rjkrash]

Do you have an Administrative user still? If so

Start > RUN > 'control userpasswords2'

check the Users must enter a password ... if not already checked.
Press the Reset Password button in the Password for Administrator frame ----
"eXPerience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - annon

 

[gben]

The user is not in the admin group.

One can reset a privileged user password on CISCO/SUN SOLARIS/HP-UX ... as long as one has console access.

Can one do the same on XP? Or was it so stupidly designed that one has to re-install the whole thing if one forgets the admin password?

Sigh...

Thanks for trying to help anyways.

 

[linney]

Here are two options I found on another forum
If NTFS
Goto

http://www.sysinternals.com

and download a copy of NTFSDOS.($400)

You can always delete the SAM file located in WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG from DOS
with the above mentioned NTFS reader/writer from Sysinternals or just
piggyback the drive in another NTFS or FAT32 machine and delete it from
windows. Once this is done and the system rebooted, you will be able to
logon with the Administrator account with a blank password.

OR


Other readers sent in information on additional password tools, such as:

NTAccess can replace the administrator password of a Windows
NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP system by rebooting the
computer with a special set of boot disks. This is useful if
you forgot the administrator password and cannot access the
Windows NT/2000/XP system. ($70;

http://www.mirider.com/ntaccess.html

ERD Commander 2002: When your Windows XP/2000/NT system won't
boot, ERD Commander 2002 boots the system using the ERD
Commander 2002 product CD, right out of the box. Once booted,
the easy-to-use ERD Commander 2002 windowing environment provides
numerous powerful tools to diagnose and repair a wide array of
problems which could prevent a system from booting. And it
provides built-in network support so that you can move data
safely off of, and on. ($400)

http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/erdcommander2002.asp

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