Forgotten Local Administrator Password

[slacker69]

Is this the right place for this thread I hear you ask?
Maybe not but read on and you will see why its under Dell Servers.

I recently moved to a small company populated by software developers which had no previous network/systems administrators at all. This was all managed with tasks shared amongst the developers, now they have grown in size they need someone to do these roles so they hired me.

Ok so in the server room I found a Dell PowerEdge 2650 doing absolutely nothing (Shame since this is a nice beast). It has Windows Server 2003 installed, no one has a clue what the local administrator password is and it has never been connected to the domain.

So normally this is easy enough, you follow some guide like :

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

This is really quite a good little guide but none of the tools mentioned will work for me because the drivers for the PERC RAID controller are not included with any of these.

PERC stands for Power Edge Raid Controller, Dells own RAID controller, so the ultimate question is....

Has anyone ever used a linux boot disk type tool to edit the SAM on a windows 2003 machine using the PERC controller. If you have can you tell me which one or if you can tell me of a tool that will allow me to load my own linux RAID drivers for the PERC controller then that would be just as useful.

Thanks in advance

Steven

 

[majestrate]

Actually, the PERC is rebranded by Dell. It's a RAID controller manufactored by LSI Logic.

That said:

1) You should be able to go to Dell's support site to download whatever drivers you need.

2) If no one uses the box, why not just reload it completely?

 

[slacker69]

1)Well yes I could get the drivers from the dell site but I need some sort of mini linux boot disc that will let me load my own drivers, all of the ones I tried only come with their own set of drivers.

2) Yes I could rebuild the box but I really dont have the time at the moment, Its basically going to become a stand by box incase any of our live externally accessed servers fall over and wont come back.

Could I just load a Live Cd like knoppix or something and then change the SAM from there? probably if I knew what I was looking for, can anyone advise on this?

 

[jkupski]

Reloading the machine would have taken less time than you have already expended.

 

[slacker69]

I Found a program that was able to do the job so all done.

Yes! no need to reinstall!!