Lost Administrator Password! 5

[RevFlash]

One of our Programming Departments, Has a HP Kayak VU800 running WINNT 4. SP6.

I am told the Computer has Important DATA on it worth saving.

However the only person with the "Administrator" password, the only password...

Forgot it!

So here we sit at Ctrl Alt Delete with no password.

Anyone know how it if there is a way to get in?
We also have no recovery disk.

We are thinking of pulling the drive, rebuilding a new one and then seeing if we can "read from the old one.

I don't think that will work because it is an IDE "active" drive...

 

[wolluf]

'I don't think that will work because it is an IDE "active" drive' - don't know what you mean by this - but its a very common approach to slave a drive which you can't boot into to another machine to retrieve its data.

Otherwise faq96-2866

 

[RevFlash]

First, thanks for a reply!

When you initalize an IDE disk you run FDISK on it and in order to make it bootable, the FDISK program will ask you if you would like to make this partition ACTIVE.

This is only with and IDE drive.

When you have two "ACTIVE" partitions, my experience has been that it causes problems.

This is not the case with SCSI, you just rejumper them.

 

[CharlWilson]

If you can get your hands on a ntfs dos bootable floppy, come up in DOS mode and CD to c:\winnt\system32\config and rename the file SAM to SAM.old

Now when you boot up, it will let you come in under Administrator only once with no password. Just hit enter.
Now the profile on the desktop will look different, but at least you won't lose anything.

 

[wolluf]

Revflash - 2 active partitions on the same drive might be a problem - but not on separate drives (its normal in fact).

 

[RevFlash]

Our NT support guy says he doesn't know how one would get there hands on a "ntfs dos bootable floppy".

But it sounds interesting...
He was on his way up to reinstall NT on the sytem in question, I asked him to hold off for a bit maybe I could find out how that is done..

 

[RevFlash]

Might have found something....

http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

 

[wolluf]

Revflash - generally software to enable write access to ntfs from dos costs money.

As I said - you should have no problem slaving that drive.
Also, the FAQ I posted earlier has a number of solutions for lost admin password (inc, a linux based bootdisk which lets you reset password - this works).

However, you're free to ignore my advice of course.

 

[Pennanti]

This article makes for an interesting read as it pertains to recovering lost paawords.

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-02-24.htm#5

 

[RevFlash]

Thanks to all!
What turned out to be the Quickest easiest approach is the post from CharlWilson.

When I came up to the Administrator login I hit "enter" no password needed.

I tried to install a Sony CDRW to copy the files off to a CDR but the SYTEME said I needed Administrator priveledges!

However, I was able to install a USB Iomega 250 Meg Zip Drive.
We are in the process of archiving the files to disk now!

So thanks again!

However we will still have to reinstall the OS because we still do not have viable Admin rights...

I think we will be going to WIN2K or XP Pro...

 

[mjinks61]

Wolluf, I have to give kudos where kudos are due.
Your advice on this thread was the cure as opposed to the band-aid.
Using the bootdisk method described in the FAQ, not only allows you to retrieve your data, It also allows you to use the machine again (intact i might add) without re-installing.

RevFlash, If you were to listen to his advice, you WOULD have viable admin rights and save yourselves a lot of hassles.

Good luck, and Happy Computing

 

[RevFlash]

mjinks61 thanks for the reply!
Alls well that ends well.

I got the software free from

http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

It took literally 5 minutes to walk up stairs boot off the disk, rename the password file and slip into the gui.

With Iomega Zip 250, I copied the files needed.

As it turns out the customer wanted to to up grade to WIN2K so as I say alls well that ends well.
However I will someday test out the way Wolluf suggested to see if it works...
As I said I do it "his way" all the time with SCSI.

I tried it unsuccessfully with IDE a couple years ago, I was told, it was because I had two ACTIVE PARTITIONS, was the reason.

Have you done this recently with IDE drives?

Thanks agian for the interest,
Rev_Flash

 

[oakstar]

hey..
i'm having a similar problem..
i'd just like to know if CharlWilson's advice will work under win xp pro as well ?

thanks

 

[wolluf]

oakstar - you can always try a blank password for Administrator (as often no password set up during installation). Also, if your filestore is FAT32, you can boot from 9x boot floppy and delete/rename the SAM file (remember its \windows not \winnt for XP).

Or check out this FAQ96-2866 - its got a number of solutions to password problems (for NT/2k/XP)

 

[oakstar]

wolluf thanks for your reply

the problem is it's ntfs
i reinstalled winxp to a new fat32 partition...
most of the ntfs partition is write protected
except that under recovery console, i can delete files..
and strangely enough from the new winxp install i was able to write to the root (to add boot files) and to rename the sam file !!
i wanted to check before doing so...

p.s, sorry if i'm off topic but, also when i try to boot from the ntfs partition i get "load needed DLLs for kernel" error message. i tried bootcfg /rebuild
and i'm afraid to do fixmbr, it says i have an invalid partition and i could lose all partitions..
i think i need the right boot kernel for boot.ini
but i don't know how to find which i need..

any ideas?

thanks

 

[wolluf]

Oakstar - am now confused by what your problem actually is. I thought you'd lost/forgotten your administrator password - but now sounds like you have possibly hardware or software problems. As this is NT forum, I suggest you start a new thread in the XP forum.

 

[JonesyMCrara]

Guys,

I was flicking through here and thought I might offer a bit of information about this "active drive" thing with IDE. It's not just IDE it goes for SCSI as well. It depends on if the PC is using a boot interrupt 80h call or not.

The active setting refers to the partition which is where the bootable files are located on a disk and which partition the OS should boot from.

You can certainly have 2 drives in the machine with partitions set to active as the second drive is on the secondary controller/primary as a slave. DOS/FAT using OS's aren't smart enough to know to look on a secondary controller/slave for an active partition (or more accurately the bootstrap isn't).

The easiest way to fix your problem is :

1.If your disk is using NTFS is stick it in another NT/XP box on the seconday controller (this is easiest as then you don't have to change any jumpers around - you would have to do this if you placed it in as a slave on the primary interface).

2. Start the machine and login. Open explorer, browse to the drive and navigate to the SAM (as outlined by another responder earlier in this thread, I think it's %SYSTEMOSROOT%\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\ and rename SAM. to SAM.OLD or whatever.

3. Remove the drive. Put it back into the original machine. Away you go. Oh yeah, don't forget to remove the BIOS entry you put in for the second drive

4. Of course if it's using FAT then it heaps easier as someone else pointed out earlier. Try

http://www.bootdisk.com,

they have loads of stuff in every flavour you can think of - for free... All work well.

Hope this has explained things a bit better.

Regards,
Jonesy.