I made a dumb move....

[desktoprat]

Home setup, Win2K AD domain.

Playing around with Security Templates, I imported the secureDC template. All well and fine. Forced me to change passwords which was no big deal at the time.

My mistake was not writing them down. I went on a 10 day vacation and needless to say, the password is nowhere near the recall section of my mind. I do have one functional test account (at power user level)that does not have interactive login rights.

So, my question is, short of rebuilding a domain, domain controller, file server and workstation, how do I recover? If there is no prescribed MS way, is there a tool I can use to brute force my way back in. I do have a general idea of the administrative password so I can give it a good starting point.

It is entirely in my own apartment so I am not concerned about upsetting anyone's sensibilities or incurring anyone's anger. Suggestions?

 

[desktoprat]

Oh yeah, I already tried using the Directory Services Restore Mode, but as you may already know, that does nothing for domain accounts. The one's that I would like to change the passwords on.

 

[desktoprat]

Fortunately, you can't lockout the administrator account. After an hour, I eventually stumbled onto the right combination of letters, numbers and symbols.

However, in the unlikely event of a recurrence of this type of event, is there a way to circumvent the original problem???

 

[dforney]

Yes, this issue may be circumvented by writing down the password!


(advanced apologies for the cheeky answer)

 

[desktoprat]

I had cut that part out of my last post, didn't think it needed to be said.

But, as I have found in life, some of the best teaching moments have come from really screwing things up.

 

[krymat]

I have reset AD administrator password successfully using directions from here:

http://www.jms1.net/nt-unlock.html