Lost Admin Password - No Floppy Drive - CD Driver Foozled
My brother has an Acer laptop with WinXP Pro. It does not have a floppy drive. The CD/DVD drive for some reason will write but not read CD'S. We wanted to update the drivers, but found he does not have admin access. We have tried booting as admin and leaving the password blank. That does not work, so there must be an admin password set.
Almost all the solutions to recovering an admin password require a bootable floppy or bootable CD. Obviously neither will work here.
I found this solution which is supposed to work, but it sound rather drastic and I am reluctant to try it as it could conceivably lock us out of the computer altogether. Can anyone comment on this solution? Has anyone tried it: http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sudhir/Hacking/Win_XP_Hack.html
Alternatively, If I connected the computer to my network at the office and logged in a domain admin to my SBS server domain, would that allow me to reset the local admin password on the computer?
Any other suggestions that do not involve a boot floppy, boot CD or disassembly of the laptop?
Almost all the solutions to recovering an admin password require a bootable floppy or bootable CD. Obviously neither will work here.
I found this solution which is supposed to work, but it sound rather drastic and I am reluctant to try it as it could conceivably lock us out of the computer altogether. Can anyone comment on this solution? Has anyone tried it: http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sudhir/Hacking/Win_XP_Hack.html
Alternatively, If I connected the computer to my network at the office and logged in a domain admin to my SBS server domain, would that allow me to reset the local admin password on the computer?
Any other suggestions that do not involve a boot floppy, boot CD or disassembly of the laptop?
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Hi Strung,
I know you haven't got a Floppy drive but to save time it might be best to buy a USB floppy Disk drive and then create a boot disk?
If you do buy one have a look at this web site, It worked for me. http://www.loginrecovery.com/
Thanks
Dan
I know you haven't got a Floppy drive but to save time it might be best to buy a USB floppy Disk drive and then create a boot disk?
If you do buy one have a look at this web site, It worked for me. http://www.loginrecovery.com/
Thanks
Dan
That hack that you found wont work anymore it only worked for windows xp with no service packs that hack was fixed with service pack 1. You could use cain&able to recover the password hash and then crack the hash all from your desktop and never have to use a floppy or cd drive on that computer. What you are going to find out though is that even after you go through the motions and crack this password and get admin access and replace the drivers your cd drive isnt going to work. You see those drives use different heads to read and write obviously your reading head is broke while the one that writes is still alive and kicking. You are going to see that you need to buy a new cd drive for it to work again.
ASKER
lrmoore: your last comment pointed me in the right direction. Although the CDROM will not read when booted from the hard drive, your suggestion that it might still allow me to boot from a CD which had different drivers did the trick. It appears the inability of the CDROM to read CD's was a driver problem and the computer will in fact boot from a CD with approriate drivers.
Hi,
There are various methods of recovering passwords out of which i will be letting you know how to recover lost admin Password :
1)Boot your system in safemode it will not ask for Admin password once you login goto start ---run---and type (control userpasswords2) through which you can reset Admin Password. OR
2) Make a Temphack dir through booting your system either by bootable CD or Floppy and goto c:/windows/system32 and create this temphack Dir and reboot your system which will open with a command prompt from where by making use of net user * Username password will reset admin password.OR
3) You can reset or Break your Admin Password by HardWare ,just replace the Jumper which is situated close to CMOS Battery on MotherBoard and this will break Admin Password and allow you login to your system from where you can reset Admin password by net user * Administrator password and the Admin password is recovered and reset.
There are various methods of recovering passwords out of which i will be letting you know how to recover lost admin Password :
1)Boot your system in safemode it will not ask for Admin password once you login goto start ---run---and type (control userpasswords2) through which you can reset Admin Password. OR
2) Make a Temphack dir through booting your system either by bootable CD or Floppy and goto c:/windows/system32 and create this temphack Dir and reboot your system which will open with a command prompt from where by making use of net user * Username password will reset admin password.OR
3) You can reset or Break your Admin Password by HardWare ,just replace the Jumper which is situated close to CMOS Battery on MotherBoard and this will break Admin Password and allow you login to your system from where you can reset Admin password by net user * Administrator password and the Admin password is recovered and reset.
Using a bootable usb memory stick. But this is only possible if your BIOS can boot from USB.
ch2