Help! Admin pass recovery in Win2k (can't login)

[TegSkywalker]

Ok let me start from the beginning on a mistake i made... dont setup a guys PC or else he will be calling you back all the time for little problems. Do you know how I found this out? A little while back I helped this friend of mine install Windows 2000 from scratch on his home computer and it was setup all fine. When I left the house, he didn't have drivers for his printer or internet, but that was ok since I came back with a burned CD and got that setup for him.

Then he did one of the worst things I can imagine: typing in a new main Admin password for the machine incorrectly while being drunk on the computer. He can't remember if he typed it in all CAPS or lowercase, or if it started with a capital letter. Every time he boots up his computer, he is presented with the Windows 2000 login screen, and it rejects every password combination he tries, not letting him login at all or accessing his files.

So here I am on my Labor Day weekend.. I get a call that wakes me up, and I listen to him talk about this while half asleep saying to myself "grr i'm not a network admin, just a web designer" but I knew this would happen because he thinks I have the answers for everything. I searched on the net as well, but didn't know what I had to do 100%.

If any of you have a solution to help me out in recovering an admin password or doing something where Win2k can show it to me before that Login screen or even having it forcefully create a new one, it would help alot.

Thank you so much!

 

[agnitrate]

Wel, I've been looking for about 15 minutes and have only found stuff that costs money. I'm not sure you would like to spend money on this.



<< First, shut down and reboot the machine so that you can gain access to the system's installation directory. You can use a DOS disk to access a FAT partition's installation directory and NTFSDOS PRO (which is capable of writing to an NTFS partition) to access an NTFS partition's directory. After you access the installation directory, rename the "logon.scr" as "logon.scr.bak", then copy "command.com" to "logon.scr". After you reboot the machine and wait about 15 minutes, the system will present you with a DOS prompt. At this point, you have full administrator access. Through the command prompt or User Manager, add a new administrator or change the administrator password, rename "logon.scr.back" to "logon.scr" and close the dos window. >>



That's one of the options you have.

Here
That's also a viable option. I would try the linux boot disk one first.

silver

 

[Escalade]

This is from http://www.windows2000faq.com


<<
Q. How do I recover a lost administrator password?

A. If there are no other accounts in the administrator group, and the machine is not part of a domain where the Domains Administrator account could be used to logon and change the local Administrator password (the domain's Administrator group is automatically made a member of the machines Administrator group when the machine joins the domain) then the only way is to reinstall NT into a new directory (not the same, as it will upgrade and see the old password) and it will let you enter a new Admin password. Also if you have an old ERD that you knew the password at time of making, you could use this and restore the SAM and security portions of the registry.

There is also a piece of software from http://www.winternals.com that can break into an NT system (LockSmith) that will change any password. The software is not free, and will cost around US$100. Their new product, ERD Professional can also change passwords and is available from the same site.

A similar piece of software is also available from http://www.mirider.com that allows you to boot off of a set of disks and change the Administrator password.
>>

 

[waytoomuchcoffee]

Please. There are tons of ways to change/recover an admin password. If you don't mind just changing your admin password instead of recovering it, try

this link.

The above works on SAM files for both Win2k and NT. Note that a lot of info applicable to NT is NOT applicable to Win2k, as the encryption hash changed.

 

[TegSkywalker]

Ok what I did was went to http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html and followed the steps such as downloading that .bin file, and writing it as a disk image with rawrite2.exe which seemed to work fine because I was able to create a disk image to the floppy and it was bootable. The .bin file was fairly recent (dated in 2001) so I assume it works in Windows 2000! yay!

Btw.. thanks for all the help guys. This forum never ceases to amaze with various people who help others who need it.

 

[konichiwa]

I would assume you could use L0phtcrack for this, right?