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XP partition backup

John Hewitt

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J
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Oct 12, 2006
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I have a problem that some more expert members of the group might be able to advise me on.

My partner has a laptop computer running xp. It developed a fault which turned out to be in physical fault in the keyboard which has now been replaced under guarantee. However, in doing their tests the tachnicians reintalled the windows xp operating system so that all subsequently installed applications software has been overwritten. The siftware includes trained voice recognition so it would be good to have this back.

I had previously copied this partition and a data partition onto a usb backup drive so everything still exists. Rather than reinstalling her software, I would like to copy back the partition. This I have done, using paragon hard disk manager and I have booted into the old partition. Unfortunately, something seems to have changed and, although this partition boots, it no longer recognizes the paswords.

At the end of the day, I don't mind reinstalling the software but I am unhappy with this situation. I like to have a backup of working partitions, which save the day if things go amiss. I don't understand what is going on here and feel uneasy about being able to recover the situation. I would be grateful for any suggestions people might have.
 
I can't help you with your present situation... I am just the computer user. But after having to do this more than once (dear daughter downloaded adware crud that required flatlining and reloading the computer) dear hubby purchased back up image software (Acronis for about $50) and a couple of external hard drives (which I am also using for photo and movie archiving).

We now make it a habit to creat an image of the system every so often. I have restored a previous image when I've screwed up the system by trying to fix it myself or when I accidently removed Paint Shop Pro, only to not be able to find the install disks.

Now I need to do an image of my laptop.
 
Yalius said:
What passwords is it no longer recognizing? XP Home, Pro, or MCE?
Click to expand...
The passwords at the user entry screen - there are two users installed herself and me - but neither password works. The actual operating system is XP Pro.
 
Success at last - I eventually got in use the last working system available in the boot menu that appears when you go safe mode by pressing F8.

Just as an aside, and while I was doing this, readers might like to know about another program I came across. this is Ophcrack
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

Ophcrack is a password cracker for XP. It didn't solve my problem because it does not seem to work in XP Pro - though I bet it could be altered to do so.

However, as I said earlier, the machine I have been trying to bring back to earth is not mine, it belongs to her. My machine is a desktop that uses XP Home not XP Pro and I also tried Ophcrack on that. Ophcrack took about two minutes to crack the passwords on my XP home machine.

So, my advice is, "be afraid, be very afraid."
 
John Hewitt said:
Success at last - I eventually got in use the last working system available in the boot menu that appears when you go safe mode by pressing F8.

Just as an aside, and while I was doing this, readers might like to know about another program I came across. this is Ophcrack
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

Ophcrack is a password cracker for XP. It didn't solve my problem because it does not seem to work in XP Pro - though I bet it could be altered to do so.

However, as I said earlier, the machine I have been trying to bring back to earth is not mine, it belongs to her. My machine is a desktop that uses XP Home not XP Pro and I also tried Ophcrack on that. Ophcrack took about two minutes to crack the passwords on my XP home machine.

So, my advice is, "be afraid, be very afraid."
Click to expand...
Old news. It doesn't help someone get in remotely, since they've got to have access to files on your machine to use the cracker - which they can't get until they've got a password. Basically, they need physical access to your machine or they need a user account on your machine that they can break into by other means. In either of those two cases you are screwed anyway. The password cracker just adds a little dressing to it.

It can be useful for getting back into a system whose password you've lost, but in that case it is usually better to just remove the password and set a new one when you get back in. There are boot disks that can do just that - delete the password from an account.
 
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