win xp, logging on as admin question

J

JSC450

Gawd
Joined
Jan 18, 2006
Messages
554
I thought there was a way to log into XP as the administrator... im working on a friends Dell, with no dell recovery cd, and no one can seem to remember their password as the machine has been down almost a year. Is there not a keystroke that will allow me to sign in as the administrator? i ask this because there is no profile to choose from other then my friend and his family.
 
Definitely not, the only thing I could think of would be to purchase (or DL from your friendly torrent site) a copy of winternal's E.R.D commander. That will allow you to change passwords, however it is incredibly expensive, so that may be an issue.
 
Yes, hit ctrl+alt+del twice. That will give you the secure logon box. Instead of the Fast-User Switching menu.
 
Kelden21 said:
Definitely not, the only thing I could think of would be to purchase (or DL from your friendly torrent site) a copy of winternal's E.R.D commander. That will allow you to change passwords, however it is incredibly expensive, so that may be an issue.
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There are free Linux boot CD's that allow you to crack the password on NT based Microsoft Operating systems. I have one such disk at home.
 
Kelden21 said:
Definitely not, the only thing I could think of would be to purchase (or DL from your friendly torrent site) a copy of winternal's E.R.D commander. That will allow you to change passwords, however it is incredibly expensive, so that may be an issue.
Click to expand...

Encouraging warez is not allowed here per forum rules.


OP is this XP Pro or XP Home?

XP Home you can only log in as administrator under safe mode, the password is usually blank.

If XP Pro, then you'll need to use a linux reset disc.

Call Dell to see if they can ship a replacement recovery CD as well.
 
Download Knoppix, burn it to a cd, then reboot it in the computer with Knoppix in the drive. Its a free live on cd OS. Pop in a thumbdrive, then snag the SAM password file and put it on the thumbdrive. (SAM password file is in C:\windows\system32\config) Take the thumbdrive to another computer and put the password file onto it. Use a free password cracking utility like LophtCrack (LC4) to crack the password. Depending on how long the password is, it can take a while. When I forgot one of my passwords, it took LC4 a week to figure it out. I think mine was 6 or 7 digits.
 
w1retap said:
Download Knoppix, burn it to a cd, then reboot it in the computer with Knoppix in the drive. Its a free live on cd OS. Pop in a thumbdrive, then snag the SAM password file and put it on the thumbdrive. (SAM password file is in C:\windows\system32\config) Take the thumbdrive to another computer and put the password file onto it. Use a free password cracking utility like LophtCrack (LC4) to crack the password. Depending on how long the password is, it can take a while. When I forgot one of my passwords, it took LC4 a week to figure it out. I think mine was 6 or 7 digits.
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Why waste time cracking a password on a computer that hasn't been used for almost a year? Simply reset the password.

Last time I checked LC4 was NOT free.
 
l0phtcrack is free. Go check for yourself. It used to be sold, but its no longer supported/sold because it violated some terms and conditions set by the us gov't. Its now shareware or freeware status.

But, nobody else provided any instruction, so I was just stating an easy way to do it, but it will take a while. If you have a very simple solution that will do it much faster, by all means please post a step by step. I am interested as well.
 
w1retap said:
l0phtcrack is free. Go check for yourself. It used to be sold, but its no longer supported/sold because it violated some terms and conditions set by the us gov't. Its now shareware or freeware status.
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Link please? If you know this to be fact, you shouldn't have any problems providing a link.

The last I knew, Symantec stopped distribution because it violated export laws pertaining to cryptography, but I have not seen any announcements at to LC being freeware.
 
Kids, cut it out.

Hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL twice gets you to the logon where you can get in as "administrator" to the computer. The answer has been provided. Stop talking about cracking tools.
 
GreNME - k.. didn't know if the op wanted the passwords for the other accounts recovered or not, so cracking them would be a good way to 'retrieve' the lost passwords, not an illegal hacking technique.

SJ - ever hear of google? type in l0phtcrack download. I just re-downloaded lc4 a little over a week ago because my old zip of it was corrupt. There are plenty of download mirrors still open with people providing the freeware/shareware version of it. I cannot provide a direct link because I am at work and the webfilter blocks it as Criminal Skills and Hacking. ;)
 
Its XP Home =[ Safe mode was the only way i could get in with the admin account, but all i got was a black screen with "safe mode" in each corner. I could bring up the task manager, but thats about it.. there were no icons or start button.

I'm trying to work around not having a recovery CD, and the 1st thing i wanted to do was load up AVG, a-squared and adaware. I'll be calling dell for a recovery CD, or find out if theres a hidden partition on the drive that i can recover from.

Also, How do you enter safe mode from start up? i hit F12 for different options, but there is no safe mode... the last time i got to it was when the PC froze and i restarted it.
 
F8 is safemode. Start hitting it before the windows load screen.
 
JSC450 said:
Its XP Home =[ Safe mode was the only way i could get in with the admin account, but all i got was a black screen with "safe mode" in each corner. I could bring up the task manager, but thats about it.. there were no icons or start button.

I'm trying to work around not having a recovery CD, and the 1st thing i wanted to do was load up AVG, a-squared and adaware. I'll be calling dell for a recovery CD, or find out if theres a hidden partition on the drive that i can recover from.

Also, How do you enter safe mode from start up? i hit F12 for different options, but there is no safe mode... the last time i got to it was when the PC froze and i restarted it.
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You didn't wait long enough for Explorer to load, I wager. F8 is the key to hit to get to safe mode from startup.
 
w1retap said:
SJ - ever hear of google? type in l0phtcrack download. I just re-downloaded lc4 a little over a week ago because my old zip of it was corrupt. There are plenty of download mirrors still open with people providing the freeware/shareware version of it. I cannot provide a direct link because I am at work and the webfilter blocks it as Criminal Skills and Hacking. ;)
Click to expand...

Yes I have, but being as you want to be helpful to people, posting a link would be appreciated saving me the time of searching for something that you obviously know.

Freeware/shareware =! Free software unless the EULA specifically states such terms.
 
Chill on the cracking tools talk here. There are some legitmate uses for such tools, but keep it in your pants please.

And don't talk about warez'ing software guys, that's pretty much common sense around here.
 
Yea, I was able to guess some passwords. but when the desktop would normally load up, theres nothing... just absolutely nothing happens. I can get the task manager, but thats it, and what in the hell am i supposed to do with just a task manager? lol =]

I tried safe mode again, and the same thing happened, black screen with safe mode around the border of the screen. i walked away for 2 hours, came back and still had the black screen. Once again the task manager was the only thing i could bring up. I could boot to safe mode with command prompt, and at least get around the HDD that way, so if i need any text documents Dell puts on the HDD, at least i can snag them once i get a floppy disk =[

seems to me someone hosed the pc pretty good, or the HDD is failing... At work, these same dell HDDs fail all the damn time.
 
JSC450 said:
Yea, I was able to guess some passwords. but when the desktop would normally load up, theres nothing... just absolutely nothing happens. I can get the task manager, but thats it, and what in the hell am i supposed to do with just a task manager? lol =]

I tried safe mode again, and the same thing happened, black screen with safe mode around the border of the screen. i walked away for 2 hours, came back and still had the black screen. Once again the task manager was the only thing i could bring up. I could boot to safe mode with command prompt, and at least get around the HDD that way, so if i need any text documents Dell puts on the HDD, at least i can snag them once i get a floppy disk =[

seems to me someone hosed the pc pretty good, or the HDD is failing... At work, these same dell HDDs fail all the damn time.
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Dude, don't panic. If you can get to the Task Manager, then you're golden. Click on File and select New Task (Run), and a run box will come up. Since you can get a run window (and a cmd window) up from Task Manager, there are loads of things you can do.

If all you need to do is edit user accounts, then type nusrmgr.cpl in the run command and you magically get your User Accounts control panel.

If you want Explorer to load, just type explorer.exe in the text box and click OK. That should get your familiar Explorer interface back up. If that doesn't work, find the explorer.exe process in the process list, kill it, then do the run command to start it again.

Heck, it isn't like you even need explorer if you want to change passwords. Just type compmgmt.msc in the run command and hit enter. All of the sudden, you have a Computer Management console.

Let us know how it works out.
 
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