Question

Terminated a staff member and she changed the password on Windows XP.

Asked by: iries

I am director of an organization.  I just terminated a person.  She changed the password on her Windows XP and now I can't get into her computer.  This is not a network but stand alone computer.  Is there a way to get in and delete the password?

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Asked On
2004-05-29 at 07:50:45ID21006707
Topic

Windows Network Security

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: meapledooPosted on 2004-05-29 at 08:24:10ID: 11187498

Hi iries,

You can create a boot disk from this utility and manually change her password:
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm#1

Or, if you have local administrator privaleges on the machine (or the local administrator password), you can log in and change her password.  The process for doing this is as follows:

1. Start->Setting->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management
2. Select 'Local Users and Groups'
3. Select 'Users'
4. Right click the user's name and select 'Set Password'

Regards,
meapledoo

 

by: richrumblePosted on 2004-05-29 at 08:42:41ID: 11187566

As mentioned in the article linked above: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ is a great way to reset the password. However this is not necessary, you can take the HD out, and place it in your PC as a secondary drive, you can copy files or whatever you need with it mounted in another pc as a second HD (the D: perhaps) Again, unless she was using EFS (encrypting file system) you do not need to reset the passsword to view what's on the HD. Also, there may be more than one account on the PC. Administrator, and UserX the person you terminated. If you press crtl+alt+delete twice at the login screen the you can log in as the administrator, unless that is the user name she was using. The utility above is good at reseting passwords, no doubt, but use it as a last resort, there are other ways to get the info of the PC.
-rich

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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