Hard disk crashed and now password does not work

J

jojo3

n00b
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Jun 10, 2008
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Hello, my cousins computer with Windows XP crashed last week, it would not boot up so I took out the Hard disk drive and put it as a slave in my PC (also WinXP). I could not see any files on the bad HDD. The Properties of the bad drive said it had "0 used space" and "0 empty space". I decided to run CHKDSK on the bad drive. It said it had to restart the computer in order to run CHKDSK.
When the computer restarted CHKDSK ran and found all kinds of errors and repaired them.
When the PC booted the disk was now "healthy" and I could see all the files on the drive
When I reinstalled it in back my cousins PC, it boots up it ask for a password but my cousins password no longer works so I restarted it in safe mode and went into the Administrator account but it also ask for a password but before the admin user in safe never had a password, I used it many times.:confused:
I hooked the HDD back to my PC as a slave again. Is there a way to remove the password
or am I going to have back up all the files to another drive and reinstall WinXP.
Thanks
 
There are utilities that can remove the administrator password. Search for "Ultimate Boot CD" (I think that is the one).
 
To use one of those utlities, you'll need to have that drive in it's original system as the system volume. You could also do a repair install, which should allow access again.

As two points of advice, I'd back his data up and then run some manufacturer tools on the drive, because I'd be very leary of it failing again. I'd also set an admin password as well. You don't want to leave any accounts unprotected, especially the admin.
 
No matter what, I would backup the data. As stated, it would be a good idea to run some utilities on the drive to test its fitness after backing everything up. Also, if the drive tests out to be good I would wipe it and reinstall the OS. After a crash, it's likely something is messed up which may cause problems at a later time.

 
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