Windows 2000 Xp and Vista Password Recovery

photo credit: booleansplit

This is the typical scenario.  Someone recently acquired a second hand computer from a friend of business associate.  Unfortunately, that computer is riddled with spyware, viruses, and malware is password protected and no one knows what that password is.  Have no fear, you may still be able to recover that Win2k, XP, or Vista password.  And, you may be able to do it for free!

Okay, without further wrangling, here are some choices:

First, a lot of people tend to create a second account with a username, but leave the administrator account without a password.  However, sometimes XP comes up with a login dialogue box and won’t let you see the accounts.  All you need to do is change the XP login on the fly.  Now, you can see those accounts listed.  Now, click on administrator and don’t use a password and try to log in.  You could also just type administrator with no password at the advanced login box.

Now, here are some password recovery tools.  Remember, these can royally hose your machine if used improperly.  But, if you can’t get into the thing, do you care?:

1. Offline NT Password Recovery Tool :
   • This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system.
   • You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
   • It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD.
   • Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!
   • It is also an almost fully functional registry editor!
   • Works with XP, Win2k, and Vista – the only one!!!
2. John the Ripper – ” John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix (11 are officially supported, not counting different architectures), Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypt(3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix flavors, supported out of the box are Kerberos AFS and Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 LM hashes, plus several more with contributed patches.”
3. DMZS – images to recovery passwords.  By the way, you have to use an iso image writer to make bootable CD’s.
4. PsPasswd – Sysinternals product to locally or remotely change password.  This site is great in general.

Okay, there is a good start for anyone.  Now, again, use these at your own risk.  And, can you now see why physically securing your computer is a good thing!  All it takes is a little ingenuity to get past passwords.  Or we can simply look under your keyboard or at the post it note on your monitor!

Now, if you have done those things without success, you could also buy Spotmau Password Genius.  It will work easier for you.  Of course, you have to pay for it – but works well if you want to use it.

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