Forgotten windows password
 

I've taken home two of my friends laptops to fix. One has a harddrive problem that i'm fixing now. The other is a laptop given to her son by school. Because it's a laptop for children it has parental controls set high. She just wanted me to change the settings on her profile, no problem there but she has forgotten the password to her account and her sons. So I can't log on. A couple of years ago a friend of mine went on my comp wich had a password. I asked him how he logged on and he just replied "it's easy when you know how" So there must be a easy way to get around this problem. Can anyone tell me how to remove or resset the password?

Hiren's Boot CD.

Has a built in untility to blank the passwords, then you can just set them to whatever you want once you log into Windows.

Well god knows how my friend did it. I've searched the net to no avail. Took hard drive out, saved her Photos and files. Reinstalled windows.

A lot of computers you can also just push ctrl+alt+del a few times at the log in screen to get the classic login, then enter administrator as the user account and get in that way. This works often because a lot of pre-built computers enable the administrator account, but never put a password on it, and it isn't normally visable.

Note: This only works on XP.

Thanks for reply. Didn't see it befor my last post. Yeah seems thats the only way to do it. I'll be forever curios as to how my friend did it. Perhaps he did it with something like you have sugested. It just seemed like he did it realy quickly. Perhaps he had found my password earlier and so already knew it. He's always looking at peoples phones and comps when he gets the chance, he's looking for private pics of girlfriends. And he likes to make out he is the king of computer knolege so was probable just pulling my leg.

Again didn't see your reply. Aarr that could well be it. thanks

If the computer is set to be bootable from CD, or if you have access to BIOS (meaning BIOS isn't passworded), and hence can enable booting from CD, you can use OPHCrack

If my memory serves me correctly, you can only crack paswords on Windows XP pre-SP3....

You talking about OPHcrack? It works on Vista and 7 as well. You just need a different set of tables. Some are free, some aren't. It's a linux based boot CD though so it can run into issues with certain hardware storage configurations that it can't mount. If you were talking about something else, then IDK lol.

Last time I had to do it, I was using UBCD. So things might have changed......

I don't think that matters. I know you can use Hiren's(which is really just a linux boot disk) to blank the password out on XP SP3. And OPHCrack just reads the hash out of the SAM file and tries to crack it with rainbow tables, which works for simple passwords, but most complex/strong passwords can't be cracked with the standard OPHCrack tables. Though you can take the hash you find from OPHcrack and run it through any number of the brute force hash crackers out there to find the password, some even use GPUs to speed the process up. Given the hash from OPHcrack, my GTX470 can crack a random 5 digit password in about 2 seconds.:laugh:

your "friend" sounds like a douche. If he's tresspassing into ppls property to look for naughty pics or whatever, he doesn't sound like a stand up person. I most certainly would not let him near any of my electronic devices....

I use ERD5.0 to reset passwords for XP. ERD6 for vista and ERD6.5 for win7.
Google it. (Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) Commander)

LOL i know who he's on about.... its gotta be the local computer numpty russel....

funny..... and pete your never on bfbc2....

This thread will help you with your problem > http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=147474

Remember the user we're talking about here. Chances are it's a simple alphanumeric, or at least one of the accounts on the computer is. Failing that, of course the hash can be cracked any number of ways, such as beating the shit out of it with a GTX470 :roll:

Or multiple GTX470s.;)

have you tried get safe mode on that

Or the WCG, potentially...

Alienisgod, yep he's douche. It's so wrong him snooping. He was winding Purcain up one night in the pub, he soon regretted that! Some usefull info here. I'm sure it will come in handy in the future. Thanks all.

I used some DOS based program at work called Password Changer which scans the partitions for security identifiers but it payware.

I carry it on a small bootable USB.

Okay i think this thread is getting into a bit of a legal minefield. I dont think we should be discussing how to hack into computers. A quiet PM to the man might have sufficed.

Sorry, I didn't think of it that way, but it is technically a discussion about hacking.