Windows 2000 Pro password problem

heres the story...in my school we have a broadcasting class with a few computers in it...along with the school come a few a-holes who dont care about life...this usually ends up messing us good people up who want to do good in life. So some moron set a password on one of the computers with windows 2000 professional and now we cant use it. Is there anyway to fix this...without reformatting?

 

You should be able to have the administrator remove that password. Whoever the IT person is who is in charge of that PC.

 

well....someone else kinda claimed the spot of "admin" so there isnt much i can think of to try except for the safemode idea.

 

http://www.lostpassword.com/windows-xp-2000-nt.htm

Try this site above for a tool to reset the administrative password. Others are on the web also.

I am still a bit puzzled how an administrative password can be changed by someone without such a privilege. Must be a very cleaver individual to be able to accomplish this or the server wasn’t set up properly in the first place.

Good luck

 

(it wasnt set up properly...or safely)

 

Did you get the situation corrected with a new password, etc.?

 

not yet...i tried two of those password changer things and they dont get started whenever i start the computer up...just goes straight to windows. I DO have it set to boot from floppy before hard drive...so i dunno. any more ideas?

 

Search for chntpw for whichever linux distro you have, the Debian version will work with Knoppix

Boot with a Knoppix Linux cd or a Linux floppy

Mount the NTFS volume and make it writeable

Run chntpw and reset the password

EDIT
Found an easier way, go to
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
They have a floppy image with chntpw already on it. Just boot with that and follow the instructions on that page

 

Windows NT and derivities use the SAM file to store Passwords. There is a product called Lopht Crack which will rewite the Hashes in the SAM file so rather than crack the password, it re-writes it. The way it works is that it boots in to Linux on a boot disk, which can read the NTFS partition and then you get a dos screen with the option to write your own password. Look up LophtCrack and if you are still having problems, I'll pint you to where you can get it.