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WIN XP PRO locked out by Admin password

Soapy Sam

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Oct 23, 2002
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Laptop at work. Compaq Armada.Win XP Pro.
No logon password.

Yesterday, XP crashed. We have an application that can do that.

Rebooted.

It wants an Administrator password.

There is none. Or at least nobody here knows it.

Most stuff is backed up offdisc, but we want to get the machine restarted.

No XP install CD.

Does anyone know any way to get around this?
Any ideas will be considered.
 
You can obviously retrieve the information by putting the drive in another machine, but I guess there's a reason you want to log on?

Anyway, I used to have a bit of software that could hack out the local admin password of a WinNT machine. Passware, I think it was. Primarily used to get password for Word documents, zip files, etc., it could also create a boot floppy to get an admin password. Might be worth trying, but I don't know whether it does XP. Probably not cheap, either.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Rat that is very interesting, thanks. As this machine is not my property I will have to ask company permission to try something like this, but I'll see what they say.

I do have the six disc start set , but it does not appear to do anything. Could be a duff floppy.
 
Yeah, I've had very good success with that tool. It's got some other nifty features on it, too. I keep that disc with all my other PC repair stuff; never know when you'll need it.
 
This is why I use PGP-encryption for data I don't actually want anyone to look at. The downside is I got a few files where I forgot the password to ;)
 
Soapy Sam said:
Laptop at work. Compaq Armada.Win XP Pro.
No logon password.

Yesterday, XP crashed. We have an application that can do that.

Rebooted.

It wants an Administrator password.

There is none. Or at least nobody here knows it.

Most stuff is backed up offdisc, but we want to get the machine restarted.

No XP install CD.

Does anyone know any way to get around this?
Any ideas will be considered.
Click to expand...

I ran into this very problem a few years back. It was on a win2000 machine, not XP, but I'm fairly certain that the administrator password was "administrator", IOW the default password that comes with the package.
 
Re: Re: WIN XP PRO locked out by Admin password

CFLarsen said:
Did you just tell us something that you shouldn't have told us? ;)
Click to expand...

It's his work machine, and may well be OEM installed. He perhaps should have said "no XP CD immediately available to me."
 
Re: Re: WIN XP PRO locked out by Admin password

Rob Lister said:
I ran into this very problem a few years back. It was on a win2000 machine, not XP, but I'm fairly certain that the administrator password was "administrator", IOW the default password that comes with the package.
Click to expand...

Windows XP Professional doesn't have a default password. you type one in during install.

I've gotten into a lot of machines using no password, administrator, or password as the login password.
 
Re: Re: Re: WIN XP PRO locked out by Admin password

Originally posted by CFLarsen
Did you just tell us something that you shouldn't have told us?

Moose said:
It's his work machine, and may well be OEM installed. He perhaps should have said "no XP CD immediately available to me."
Click to expand...


Moose- Correct. It's a company laptop. Corporate licence (I assume).
This is why I'm not about to try crackware without permission, which I doubt will be forthcoming. It can go back to Houston and be dealt with there. The replacement has arrived.
We had offline backups for all important data. There are a few doc files not backed up. We can rewrite those. Bit of a pain.
I've already tried all the likely default passwords. The last longterm user was Hungarian and has since departed, so it could be anything.

thanks for the suggestions everyone. They may well prove useful on personal machines.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: WIN XP PRO locked out by Admin password

[There are a few doc files not backed up. We can rewrite those. Bit of a pain. [/B]
Click to expand...


Get a 5.25 to 2.5 inchi hard drive adapter. Install the hard drive into a desktop system as a second drive. Copy said documents.

Sometimes forgiveness is easier to get than permission.....
 
ShowMe- I'm on an offshore drilling rig, not an electronics shop.
If it can't be done with a ten pound sledge and a 36"pipe wrench, it can't be done! :)
 
Well, now. Lateral thinking works.

I looked at my reply to Moose and thought "Houston?"

I had already tried the name as password- then I thought, "What if that's the name of the user account?"

And it was.

Thanks for poking the brain into action everyone. Virtual beers all round!
 
As an aside ,does anyone know if a boot from CD OS like Knoppix would have given access to these files? (can't try it now as unfortunately I'm at work)
:(
 
Don't know Knoppix.
There is a six floppy rescue set available from Microsoft which can help start an XP machine, depending what's wrong. In this case it only got me to a CMD interface version of the request for the password. Which is as it should be. The OS was working after all, and that would be far too easy a workaround.
 
I actually have a CD that boots you into a Windows shell, that allows you to change passwords, edit the registry and move/delete/copy files. It completely bypasses the installed OS.

Very useful for damaged OS's, or when you forget your administrative password :)

I've had to use it to get rid of certain Malware that protects it's own Registry entries... grrrr

SSR
 
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