Recovering forgotton Windows password?

[Shmee150]

A friend of mine has forgotton the password needed for him to get through the windows log in screen. He can of course log in under another user but would like to be able to use his account. Is there a simple way to get around this or will he need to create a new account and then just transfer all the files and settings across.

Thanks for you time,

ShMeE150

[Norky]

How likely is your friend to have used a dictionary word as his password?

[Moby-Dick]

which version of windows ?

is the other account an administrator ?

[Ross Stone]

If you had windows xp installed before service pack 2 was released then the Administrator password would have been blank.

Now what you do you go into safe mode, login as Administrator and then run a password reset program built into windows.

I have forgotten the name... Bugger, one second...

[Ross Stone]

Ok got the details,

To boot into safe mode, press F8 before the windows logo appears and select Safe Mode.
Then login as the Administrator Account. This account only appears in safe mode.
Do not do a system restore when it asks you.
Then select Start > Run and type:
"control userpasswords2"
Then click ok,
A window will appear and from here you can reset any passwords without having to enter the original password.

Hope this helps.

[Splash]

if the other user is an administrator they can login then goto control panel>User accounts and reset his password to allow him in again.

EDIT - that'll teach me to wander off halfway through reading a thread!

[Ross Stone]

How likely is your friend to have used a dictionary word as his password?

I like your style!

Is that a hint to use pwdump and a dictionary cracker? lol.

Windows passwords are easy, even my password with numbers and letters, only took 6 minutes to crack using brute force. Although its only 6 chars long.

If your intrested we can go along this route if you don't have access to an administrator account, but its a lot more work.

[Shmee150]

Unfortunately the computer does have an administrator account but that is also passworded and he does not remember what that might be either because he set it up quite a while ago when it was bought.

So I'm not really sure what to do now, I think that I probably need to do this pwdump thing your talking about but haven't ever come across it before so could probably do with some assistance if anybody is able to help.

Thanks again for your time guys,

ShMeE

[Norky]

If he set the password when he bought it it'll probably be very simple.

Assuming you have access to the computer, the quickest thing to do then is create a DOS boot disk, boot into it and copy C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SAM and C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM onto the disk. SYSTEM probably won't fit but don't worry.

PM me once you have those 2 files as I can't go in to the next steps on here

[TheAnimus]

ah march of the ignorant, regratbly recent windows passwords aren't that simple to crack, NTLM is piss easy (a network authentification), but the stored versions aren't that trivial.

Also, no ones mentioned the defacto method for cracking them.

head over to:
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

download the live CD, burn the ISO, job done.

edit: should mention the advantage of cracking to simple resetting, is simple resseting will loose any "user encrypted" data.

[Shmee150]

What is the disadvantage of this cracking technique? Will it boot from outside windows? (i'm assuming it does but can't find it anywhere)

Norky, Thank you very much for the offer, i'll get back to you when I hear a little bit about this ophcrack thing and I'll go from there.

Thanks again,

ShMeE

[TheAnimus]

Its just like a "livecd", you downlaod the ISO, 474meg, uncompressed. Burn, put in computer, set computer to boot from CD, boot from said CD...... you get the idea.

[Shmee150]

Perfect! Doing it at the moment, but I'm only on the internet via a 3G datacard which can only download at 43kbps, so another 4 odd hrs before finishing.

Thank you very much for directing me to that and I'll let you know where it gets to.

Cheers,

ShMeE

[TheAnimus]

Its a great CD to have, anyone else reading the thread its very simple to use, and is very helpful to have in your "repair" kit.

[pak000]

if you have the hash from pwddump, then i have some rainbow tables that will solve about 99% of alphanumeric passwords if you want to send me the hash, it will take about 2minutes, once i remember how to use the tables again

[Norky]

ah march of the ignorant, regratbly recent windows passwords aren't that simple to crack, NTLM is piss easy (a network authentification), but the stored versions aren't that trivial.

That's why I asked for the SYSTEM file as well