Administrator Password

[jonnydog]

Me and Mrs JD have been given a laptop and last night I think I changed the domain name from network to Home. It restarted and upon rebooting it came to the log-in page. The only account that comes up is Administrator. We are not aware of the password as the laptop came from someone who left their place of work and were not asked to return the laptop... if you get my meaning!

I have tried running it in safe mode and tried everything to get onto the desktop to initiate a System Restore.

I am hoping to get a password cracker tomorrow of my bruv, I was wondering if anyone has experience of this and what the procedure is to get through the Admin, also, once through will I be able to delete/Reset the password?

... I'm afraid I'm not an I.T. Whiz


Cheers for any help

[RedJ]

if you've not got the restore CD you'll have to take it to the local PC shop mate (as far as I know)

[Rios]

You need to use something like Hirens to reset your administrator password.  That at the very least will get you into the PC and enable you to reset any of the local or cached domain accounts that are one the PC.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/resetting-windows-password/

You boot from it and choose the Offline NT Password Changer which will then reset or remove the administrator password.  It's not the friendliest but as long as you stay away from any of the partitioning tools you can't make it any worse than it already is.


Note the CD itself isn't strictly legal hence why I've not put any actual links to download.  They aren't difficult to find, but if you struggle PM me and I'll send you a link.

[RobTheRover]

And theres me thinking you were gonna say \"Do a format and put Linux on it\", Rios

;-)

[Rios]

Gotta be a bit more pragmatic about it... if someome's saying that they don't understand Windows which has been in general use for 20 years then telling them to use Linux is just a recipe for disaster!

But someone like yourself Rob... should be using Linux!  ;-)

[jonnydog]

All sorted now thanks to my Bruvva... Legend!

Cheers all for advice. I'm gonna have to try and understand the whole I.T. systems one day