Password

  • Thread starter Thread starter Duane
  • Start date Start date
D

Duane

I encountered a problem last night. It appears that someone has hacked my
computer. I am running windows XP Professional. There are three accounts,
my name, Admin, and a third name, The The first two users are password
protected, but the third is not. All three have administrative rights. I
can log on with the user which does not have a password, but not my name or
Admin.

Is there any way to work around and log on my name. If not is there a way
to retrieve the data from the My Documents folder. The rest of it I could
care less about.
 
If you can log-on with an account which has Admin rights, you should be able
to reset the passwords for the other two users. The only thing to watch here
is that any encrypted files (EFS) will be lost if you do. Since not many
people use EFS this isn't too likely.

The easiest way to reset a password is to open a command prompt and type:

NET USER [username] [password]

Replacing the bits in parentheses, of course.

You should also be able to take posession of the other user's My Documents
folder, which will enable you to grant yourself access-rights to it.

If none of these work, then recovery of the data with a bootable Linux CD
(e.g. Knoppix) is an alternative. Or you could use BartPE.
 
Thanks for the response. I was able to go to the computer management
console, right click on my user name and set a new password. Worked like a
champ.
 
In addition to Ian's excellent advice if you truly believe your computer was
hacked by a malicious user then you can not trust that computer and there
could be backdoors, keyboard loggers, etc that could be used to try and
steal sensitive data from you or impersonate you. Not knowing your situation
maybe a family member/roommate/friend? did this but if you can not resolve
what happened you need to be concerned. Of course steps would need to be
taken to try and prevent the problem from happening again which may include
physically securing the computer or at least the hard drive [removeable
tray] before taking the time to clean up everything. The link below is a
good start on basic ways to protect your computer/network. --- Steve

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxpsp2/Default.mspx
-- Protect Your PC
 
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