Decommission / repurpose a network of computers with Active Directory domain, and no Administrator password
Hello,
A friend bought a group of computers at auction from a business that closed down an office. There are 9 workstations, mostly dells, all running 7 pro, with stickers on the cases, and a server running 2008 Foundation server. The server has raid 1 with 3 drives (how does that work? lol) and 1 is reporting smart errors. It does boot, but we don't have any passwords; I tried NT Offline Password editor, but it throws an error at the last step of saving the changes back to the system.
The workstations are fair, and some we've tested seem to be running okay. Is there any way to disjoin the workstations properly without a password to the server? Or am I just going to have to reinstall windows 7?
If it was windows 8, I'd run the reset function, or if 10 was available yet, I'd upgrade it, and then reset it...
Any ideas?
Thanks!
--Jon
A friend bought a group of computers at auction from a business that closed down an office. There are 9 workstations, mostly dells, all running 7 pro, with stickers on the cases, and a server running 2008 Foundation server. The server has raid 1 with 3 drives (how does that work? lol) and 1 is reporting smart errors. It does boot, but we don't have any passwords; I tried NT Offline Password editor, but it throws an error at the last step of saving the changes back to the system.
The workstations are fair, and some we've tested seem to be running okay. Is there any way to disjoin the workstations properly without a password to the server? Or am I just going to have to reinstall windows 7?
If it was windows 8, I'd run the reset function, or if 10 was available yet, I'd upgrade it, and then reset it...
Any ideas?
Thanks!
--Jon
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You are correct that drivers will take some extra time to add, but shouldn't be too bad if they are available from Dell for the version of Windows you are installing. If they are the same model, you can use SysPrep and image the drives, minimizing the duplicate work.
I think that is cheap "insurance" to know that you have a good installation of Windows. Otherwise you have no idea and will wonder about it with every problem.
I think that is cheap "insurance" to know that you have a good installation of Windows. Otherwise you have no idea and will wonder about it with every problem.
ASKER
Was not acceptable to use OS's as is, commenters were correct.
http://www.howtogeek.com/106333/how-to-reset-your-forgotten-domain-admin-password-on-server-2008-r2/
https://4sysops.com/archives/forgot-the-domain-admin-password/