On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 19:10, Paul Wilkins wrote: > Nick Rout wrote: > >As a last resort I have a cd that will enable me to zero out the > >password again, but there must be something simpler, as the password > >MUST be correct, as I can mount over the network with smbfs????? > > By default windows keeps two hashes for its passwords. One for NT > compatible interfaces such as smbfs and another one for all dancing all > singing Windows XP. The NT ones are stored in a SAM file, while the > WinXP ones are in the registry. They're also kept (both) in the restore > directory. > > Have you thought about gaining access to WinXP on the administrator > account. Once you're in you can then change the users password. > > There are some tools around for changing the admin password. > Such as, http://www.thomasmathiesen.com/itak/html/software.html
Thanks, thats interesting about the dual password hash thing. It may explain it. In the end I used Peter Nohrdahls NT password changer http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ to zero out the password, which allowed it to go back to the password-less situation, then change things round again. The rescue disk (which is linux with ntfs write support) allows you to change the SAM, and the registry for that matter, although I changed the SAM entry. This NT machine is "inherited" - it came with a newsletter editing job that my wife Sue has taken on. In other words the previous user has played with it. It seems that the "Sue" user, which was set up by the previous person is actually some sort of alias to Administrator. There is no Sue account in the SAM. I zeroed the Administrator password in the SAM, and that allowed a password-less login to the Sue account. There is an apparently disabled "Lisa" account in the SAM (Lisa was the previous user). I am a bit nervous about leaving "Sue" as an apparent "alias" to "Administrator" - same as I wouldn't give her a user number of zero on a linux box for everyday use! I don't know enough about XP to know the ins and outs of this. Some clues as to how this all works would be handy. I HATE the XP user manager dialogs - can I get the W2K equivalent anywhere? Sorry guys I know this ain't an NT/XP list, but the signal to noise ratio is significantly better than nz.comp, and I ain't signing up to any windows mailing lists. google is not much use as I am not sure enough about what I am doing to serch for anything more significant than "XP user password", which isn't any help.
