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Forgot administrator password

i have installed window 2000 professional in my system.
forgot the administrator password.
do i have to reload windows 2000 or is there a way to
find out the password or to erase it ?
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Luc Franken
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list credits go to PeteLong
As LucF says, this one is easy and works fine on 2000.

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

The only issue I found was that changing the password didn't work, I had to leave it blank.
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it_pro

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LucF

am currently working from a different system.
will try ur links and get back 2 u.

Stoner is true, changing the password with ntpasswd often fails, do as he suggested and leave the password blank, after a reboot you'll be able to change the password from nothing to whatever you want.

LucF
Another method you can use is to boot either from a bootable dos disk and then run ntfsdos program in order to be able to see the ntfs partition or boot from windows 2000 cd and use the emergency console to access the partition.

After that, all you have to is go to /winnt/system32/config and erase tha "sam" file. This is the passwd file of windows NT(and 2000). If you erase it and reboot windows will make a new one and set the adminstrator password to "". That means that in the login screen you will have to just press enter and you are loged in! Then you can change your password back to whatever u want with standar operations.

Hope I helped.
d4rw1n, your solution will work, but you will loose all personal settings and an NTFS bootdisk wich you can read/write with is not cheap. I and I gues a lot others with me like free solutions. With free NTFS bootdisks you'll only have read rights. So deleting will be out of the question.
But if the administratoraccount is the only account on the system it's a good solution.
LucF
Lucf,

I agree to that, I just gave another solution. If not anything else, everybody will learn that it is a great security thread to have a computer able to boot from a disk. :)
Addtionally there is the option of booting with windows cd.(which should be bought too...but....) :p
That's ok, I didn't mean to offend you. Other solutions are always welkom. I just posted the effects of your solution.
I know....no prob.
:)
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Instead of trying all this
Is it possible to login as a power user or general user and create
an user with administrator privileges .
Once created you can change the administrator password.

Is such a solution possible ?
Nope, of course not, that'll be a very big security risk. Please try some of our suggestions, they are pretty easy to perform.
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ASKER

thanks
ThanQ for the points
Will these solutions work with XP?  I just did an upgrade for a customer from 98 to XP.  It worked great for 3 days and then it quit loading his desktop icons.  The background he chose is there but no start button, no tool bar at the bottom and no icons.  Ctrl+Alt+Del produces an error message saying the task manager has an error and must shut down.  Also Dr Watson Debugger comes on with an error message and says it must shut down and that I will probably lose unsaved data.  Following the appropriate links I can get on the internet (Cable modem, no dialing or authentication needed) and surf just fine but no desktop.  So I'm trying to repair the installation so as to save his data.  It asks for the administrator password but I never put one in. Hitting Enter without typing a password doesn’t work.  Is there a default administrator password?

Thanks for any help

Phil


You are supposed to start your own question at Experts-Exchange.
But I'll make an exception this time: Yes, they will work.
You can try pressing the (win key + E) shortcut and raise a windows explorer. If this works, then you will be able to handle the data and save them to another disk.
go to www.lostpassword.com
Download Passware Tools

Windows XP/2000/NT Key resets Windows XP/2000/NT security settings if Administrator password, secure boot password or key disk is lost.

This application creates Windows Key driver disk. Reboot locked system using Windows XP/2000/NT setup disks or CD-ROM and load Windows Key driver at the load 3rd party raid driver prompt. When Windows Key driver is loaded, it will show you the list of Windows installations that could be processed.  Choose the installation and your password will be reset to 12345
Thanks for that Luc,it was of great help to me.Thanks again.

Good to hear that resolveitltd,

Can you close your question? http:Q_20968777.html