Lost Password

[HotDamn!]

My girlfriends mom somehow forgot or lost her password for her account on her computer. She has two other accounts on the computer but they are her kids and not admins for the PC. She wants to get her picks off of her account before I reformat it for her so I was hoping someone knew how to possibly reset the password for her before she brings down the PC tomorrow.

I don't know much about the computer except for the fact that its windows xp. My girlfriend says that she thinks it pops up saying windows xp 2000 or something.

Any help would be great. Thanks

[Safesurfer]

See http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm for an article on password recovery tools.

Handy guide here too http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_recover_your_lost_windows_user_account_password

[guns1inger]

If you want to try to work out what the password is, try OrphCrack. It can take 10 - 20 minutes, but if the passwords isn't hugely long and complex, it will usually find it. It is a standalone Linux distro, so download the iso, burn to CD then boot the XP machine from it. Details and downloads here : http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

The other alternative is to reset the password to blank, then set a new password when you log in. This is the simpler method, however it comes with a big caveat. If you have encrypted your drives using the built in encryption or bitlocker, you will not be able to access any of these files unless you can remember what the original password was. It is unlikely that she has done this, but you need to be aware of this going in. Again, download an ISO, burn to CD and boot off the CD. More details and downloads here : http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

[jman98]

If you are Unix/Linux literate, you can use something like the Trinity Rescue Kit for this purpose. I have personally used Trinity to wipe XP admin passwords both on my own PC and my dad's and I can verify it works. However, if you are not used to working in Unix/Linux than one of the other suggestions is probably better.

[HotDamn!]

I feel dumb for not trying this before but it was suggested to me to try and hit ctrl, alt, del twice at the login screen and use administrator for the username and leave the password blank. I guess her account was called Owner so she was under a diff account with admin privileges.

So she was allowed to change her password through the admin account. Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll bookmark those links for future problems.

[guns1inger]

Put a secure password on the administrator account - that is a major security hole at the moment. (Oh, and write the password down somewhere secure in case you need it again )