unknown password for singing in to win2k - how to get in?

  • Thread starter Thread starter niteowl
  • Start date Start date
N

niteowl

hi,

one of my daughter's friends has a win2k machine, and suddenly her password
won't work anymore... she says all was working okay, went away on a trip and
when she came back it wouldn't work..

my guess is someone changed it, maybe on purpose, maybe simply a mistake,
but no one is fessing up...

in win98 I could just boot to dos and delete the .pwl file, and have it boot
again... is there something similar I can do in win2k?

thanks,
niteowl
 
niteowl said:
hi,

one of my daughter's friends has a win2k machine, and suddenly her password
won't work anymore... she says all was working okay, went away on a trip and
when she came back it wouldn't work..

my guess is someone changed it, maybe on purpose, maybe simply a mistake,
but no one is fessing up...

in win98 I could just boot to dos and delete the .pwl file, and have it boot
again... is there something similar I can do in win2k?

thanks,
niteowl
Click to expand...

After fixing this problem, ask your daughter's friend how many
sets of keys she has for her car. If it's more than one, ask her
why. Now suggest to apply the same line of thought to her PC,
by creating a second admin account and locking the details
away in a safe place.
 
thanks John John,

researching this brought up another challenge... my computer (windows XP
Pro) has only a USB floppy drive, which is coming up as the "B" drive... and
these programs are looking for an "A" drive to create the boot disk..

I had an "A" drive showing, but none installed, so went into the cmos and
set the A floppy as not installed, hoping the USB would take that drive
letter, but it's still showing as "B"

Went into the Administrative Tools thinking I could simply reassign the
drive letter, but it doesn't show up in there... so..... how do I get this
system to see the USB floppy as the "A" drive?

thanks,
niteowl
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
After fixing this problem, ask your daughter's friend how many
sets of keys she has for her car. If it's more than one, ask her
why. Now suggest to apply the same line of thought to her PC,
by creating a second admin account and locking the details
away in a safe place.
Click to expand...

excellent idea, she's only 15, but the idea and example is certainly
pertinent. ;)

I know windows XP creates an Admin profile automatically, does win2k do that
also? If so, any way to access that one?

thanks,
niteowl
 
niteowl said:
excellent idea, she's only 15, but the idea and example is certainly
pertinent. ;)

I know windows XP creates an Admin profile automatically, does win2k do that
also? If so, any way to access that one?

thanks,
niteowl
Click to expand...

I fail to see what the profile (profile folder?) has to do with
passwords. Please elaborate.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
I fail to see what the profile (profile folder?) has to do with
passwords. Please elaborate.
Click to expand...

what I'm referring to is during an install of XP (and I'm wondering if win2k
does it also) is that it creates an administrator account (I believe it
defaults to an "admin" password unless changed during setup) that can be
accessed by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Del twice at the sign in screen, I suppose
this would qualify as a backup as it's hidden as far as I know... so it
would give me access and then I could change the password on her profile.
IF Win2k creates this administrator account as does XP. ??

I did try this on the win2k machine, it did not work, but I was wondering if
there was another combination of actions that might be necessary.

this is based on my limited knowledge of XP of course, win2k may not even do
this.

that help? (I may be delusional too... it's been a while since I messed
with any of this stuff)

thanks,
niteowl
 
What file did you download? I don't know how to change the USB drive
letter assignement off hand but the diskette creation program for the
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor asks you for the target drive when
you execute it, so just type in b for your diskette drive. I just now
tried it and it works for me. It took less than 5 minutes to do the
diskette and when I booted with it, it loaded the expected utility.
Here are the steps I took:

1- Download: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bd050303.zip

2- Unpack bd050303.zip to a suitable loaction.

3- Stick a diskette in my diskette drive and format it to make sure it
has no bad sectors.

4- In the folder where I unpacked bd050303.zip there are 3 files,
bd050303.bin, install.bat and rawrite2.exe. Double clik rawrite2.exe
and a cmd session starts:

RaWrite 2.0 - Write disk file to raw floppy diskette

Enter disk image source file name: bd050303.bin
Enter target diskette drive: a
Please insert a formatted diskette into drive A: and press -ENTER- :

I typed in the source file name (bd050303.bin) and the target drive (a)
and the rest just happens, the diskette is created, that's all there is
to it. At the "Enter target diskette drive:" line you just have to type
b for your USB diskette.

Remove the diskette when done and boot the affected computer with it.

John
 
niteowl said:
what I'm referring to is during an install of XP (and I'm wondering if win2k
does it also) is that it creates an administrator account (I believe it
defaults to an "admin" password unless changed during setup) that can be
accessed by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Del twice at the sign in screen, I suppose
this would qualify as a backup as it's hidden as far as I know... so it
would give me access and then I could change the password on her profile.
IF Win2k creates this administrator account as does XP. ??

I did try this on the win2k machine, it did not work, but I was wondering if
there was another combination of actions that might be necessary.

this is based on my limited knowledge of XP of course, win2k may not even do
this.

that help? (I may be delusional too... it's been a while since I messed
with any of this stuff)

thanks,
niteowl
Click to expand...

During the setup phase, Win2000 creates an "administrator" account
with the password that YOU specify.
 
John John,

the program I have is one for recovering the pasword, not simply resetting
it...
I've read that changing the password may affect some encrypted stuff, not
that I think she has any, but you never know.. that program seeks for an
"A:" drive, and has no option for setting target drive.. ;(

so I'm gonna go ahead and download this file as an option if I can't get an
answer about reassigning the drive letter... I'd like to do that anyway, so
it'll be a bonus I guess if someone has an answer to that little challenge.

I also appreciate the link to download that file, the site you sent me too
had a redirect because I use MSIE, and I didn't feel like installing another
browser just to see his information.

Thanks for your help,

niteowl
 
John John,

followed your directions, but when I hit "ENTER", the command window just
closed, nothing happened. :(

tried it several times, same result.

I moved it to an older win98 machine, and it worked just fine though on the
standard A: drive.. ??

Seems there's some issues with the USB floppy...

thanks for the help.

niteowl
 
I see... can you give me the link to the file you were trying to unpack
and use?

By the way you can create the diskette by double clicking the
install.bat file instead of directly invoking the rawrite2.exe file. By
rights, that is the correct way to do it, in this case the bat file
contained about nothing so I just did a direct execution of the file but
that is not the right way to do these things, in some cases that would
cause problems so it's always best to use the supplied .bat file for
these kind of things.

John
 
Yeah, these USB devices can be quirky to say the least. When buying a
new pc I always insist on having an internal diskette drive. Computer
manufacturers are going on the extreme cheap nowadays and consumers
sometimes don't know what problems might pop up latter on. A diskette
drive costs about $10 in a new pc and I think it's $10 well spent. The
diskette drive is necessary if you want to flash the BIOS or if you need
to install scsi/raid (F6) drivers when you install Windows. But you got
around the problem anyhow...

John
 
sure, it's http://www.lostpassword.com/kit.htm

btw, I was able to "remount" the drive by going into the registry and
deleting the A and B dos drives, and on reboot, it remapped it so now the
USB floppy is my A: drive, though this program still just quit on me instead
of trying to write the file... so not sure why that's still an issue, but I
got it made and tested today anyway, will go over and fix this gals computer
tomorrow morning.

thanks again,

niteowl
 
At US$195.00 I think I'll pass... ;-)

John
sure, it's http://www.lostpassword.com/kit.htm

btw, I was able to "remount" the drive by going into the registry and
deleting the A and B dos drives, and on reboot, it remapped it so now the
USB floppy is my A: drive, though this program still just quit on me instead
of trying to write the file... so not sure why that's still an issue, but I
got it made and tested today anyway, will go over and fix this gals computer
tomorrow morning.

thanks again,

niteowl
Click to expand...
 
Back
Top