Thanks for the links, Mike, I'll check them out.
Here's how I solve the problem. First I reset the administrator password
by using Sticky Keys:
You can do this with a bootable Windows PE USB stick or by using Windows
RE. You can start Windows RE by booting the Windows Vista or Windows 7
setup DVD and then selecting “Repair” instead of “Install Windows.”
By the way, you can’t use the Windows XP boot CD for this purpose
because its Recovery Console will ask for a password for the offline
installation. However, you can use a Vista or Windows 7 DVD to reset a
forgotten Windows administrator password on Windows XP.
This works because Windows RE, which is based on Vista or Windows 7,
will let you launch a command prompt with access to an offline
installation without requiring a password.
To reset a forgotten administrator password, follow these steps:
Boot from Windows PE or Windows RE and access the command prompt.
Find the drive letter of the partition where Windows is installed. In
Vista and Windows XP, it is usually C:, in Windows 7, it is D: in most
cases because the first partition contains Startup Repair. To find the
drive letter, type C: (or D:, respectively) and search for the Windows
folder. Note that Windows PE (RE) usually resides on X:.
Type the following command (replace “c:” with the correct drive letter
if Windows is not located on C:):
copy c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe c:\
This creates a copy of sethc.exe to restore later.
Type this command to replace sethc.exe with cmd.exe:
copy /y c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe
Reboot your computer and start the Windows installation where you forgot
the administrator password.
After you see the logon screen, press the SHIFT key five times.
You should see a command prompt where you can enter the following
command to reset the Windows password (see screenshot above):
net user your_user_name new_password
If you don’t know your user name, just type net user to list the
available user names.
You can now log on with the new password.
I recommend that you replace sethc.exe with the copy you stored in the
root folder of your system drive in step 3. For this, you have to boot
up again with Windows PE or RE because you can’t replace system files
while the Windows installation is online. Then you have to enter this
command:
copy /y c:\sethc.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe
Then I activated the administrator account, logged in and cleaned up
both my son's and my wife's account. To tell you the truth, I only did
all of this to see if I could do it. I have subsequently upgraded this
PC to Win7 Home Premium.
Steve
On 7/4/2011 10:17 PM, Michael Resnick wrote:
Steve,
You might also want to take a look at <http://www.nirsoft.net/>NirSoft
- they have a lot of useful
<http://www.nirsoft.net/password_recovery_tools.html>password recovery
utilities as well as others.
They are a legit web site and their utilities are free.
Their <http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/passwordfox.html>PasswordFox
utility will extract the user names/passwords stored in Firefox.
It is a small password recovery tool that allows you to view the user
names and passwords stored by Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
By default, PasswordFox displays the passwords stored in your current
profile, but you can easily select to watch the passwords of any other
Firefox profile.
For each password entry, the following information is displayed:
Record Index, Web Site, User Name, Password, User Name Field, Password
Field, and the Signons filename.
If you combine <http://www.nirsoft.net/>Nirsoft's
<http://www.nirsoft.net/>toolset with
<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062>Microsoft's
<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062>Sysinternals
you end up with a very powerful set of tools.
The
<http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2010/05/nirsoft-sysinternals-one-interface.html>Windows
System Control Center is a third party application that
pseudo-integrates these two toolsets and acts as a control center for
them that will increase the usefulness of both.
-Mike
At 07:03 PM 7/4/2011, Steve Tomporowski <[email protected]> wrote:
My son lost his passwords (Teenage mind derailing), so he asked me to
find them. I ran into this which made the job very easy....too easy.
http://www.paulspoerry.com/2008/09/30/firefox-view-your-saved-passwords-for-any-page/
Steve
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