Administrator password is lost? What can you do?

Sean Mota

SatelliteGuys Master
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Supporting Founder
Sep 8, 2003
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my boss laptop has this problem. He forgot his administrator password and now he does not access to it? Any way to get it back? I did a google and there are some claims that is possible to get without re-installing winxp. Anyone?
 
There are tons of utilities for this, but I haven't used any personally. Search google for "recover administrator password" or some variation of that. Backup the system first.

Or, simply ask your boss where he was born, his wife's name, his kids names, his pets, his hobbies, his favorite sport, his car, his birthday, anniversary, etc. and for the typical user you'd have enough data gathered to guess their password. Or if you wrote all those answers down and showed them to the boss then in might jog their memory.

You could always just try "password", "passw0rd", "password123", "administrator" or simply a carriage-return.

You might think I'm joking, but I'm not.
 
i have a cd i downloaded that is a linux distro that you can run that will let you clear the password, or change it, without booting into windows.
i'll see if i can find the name of it tomorrow when i run over to my office
 
The administrator password on most machines I've encountered is... "" (omit the quotes)

I assume that the machine is NOT a member of a Windows Server domain. If it is, you could simply logon with a domain administrator account, and change the password on the local administrator account.
 
One cavaet about resetting the password. As it states on the site, if you have your personal files encrypted by windows, you can't reset the password or you will lose your files. You will need a password cracker and recover the password inorder for your files to be usable. It clearly states that on the site but I wanted to call it out.

Most people don't encrypt so it will work for most cases.
 

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