Since using my Microsoft fingerprint reader to access my xp admin acct (the
only acct on my cpu) I have forgotten my password. Now I have read all of the
suggestions such as pressing f8 on start up and select safe mode etc.... my
question is, since i do have access to my computer is there another way to
get, retrieve or replace my administrator password and does the f8 suggestion
do any damge to the computer or any files other than the password its self ?
Really want to fix problem before there is a problem like my fingerprint
ready taking a crap. Thanks any one with advice .
Plan A.
If your "fingerprint" account has local administrator rights you can
use it to reset any other user account password. To check, open a
command line, and enter "net localgroup". On the list you find your
local administrator group name, which is language dependent. If your
OS language is english, it is "administrators".
Next enter "net localgroup administrators" (actual group name from
above step). You will see a list of all accounts that are members of
the administrators group. If there are other accounts than
"Administrator" on the list you can use any of them to reset the
password of the administrator account.
If you are really a lucky guy your "fingeprint" account is on the
list.
To reset the password enter "net user administrator <new password>".
Plan B.
If you don't have any other admin account than "Administrator" you are
(officially) out of luck, there is no way (no F8, safe mode, ...) way
to reset the Administrator account password. Practically, if you are
in posession of a working user account you can use any of the many
tricks to elevate a user accounts privileges to administrator or
system, and then reset the password. Actually you hack your own
machine, which is fairly easy if you have either access to the
physical harddisk or a working user account.
Check the many websites that assist users of "restricted" machines in
breaking out of their restricted working environment. It depends on
the patch level of your machine OS how deep you need to dig into it,
so I cannot simply post a working hack right away.
Aother way (probaby easier) is to take the harddrive out of the
machine, mount it as second harddrive on a different machine, and
access your old OS on the file level. Unfortunately you cannot
directly access the password, since it is hidden and encrypted, but
you can open your old machine's registry and inject a program or
script that resets the password, or opens a command line with admin
privileges, so you can use net user like descrbed above. Popular ways
to do that is to (mis)use the task scheduler or install your
password-setting program as a service so windows starts it upon boot
or inject a startup script. Then take the disk back to the original
machine and boot.
If you have a couple of $ to spend you can also use the "ERD" disk
product, which resets the local admin account via a serial cable
connection. But afaik this product is not free, and I haven't used it
for a long time now, so I am not sure wether it does still work with
XP.
....Armin
