Hi, everybody!
We had a problem with obtaining system Administrator password of offline machine, since our “bright” users had lost it. We looked for way how to crack lost Administrator logon password during three days… Well, solution was very simple.
You just have to take out primary hard disk ( C: ) and put it in the some other machine as second hard disk for example D: After that you have full access to information on second disk, but that is not the point. You have to look for files (use search) Sam and Sam.log (location - directory {SecondHardDiskLetter:}\WINNT\System32\config) on second hard disk (it’s not possible to access (include copy) Sam.* files on primary hard disk). After that you just rename them or (re)move them it does not matter. Then you take your disk back to its original machine and start your work as Administrator without password. NT will create files Sam and Sam.log all over again. During this process user accounts will be lost, but that is not a big problem, profiles are still there, you just make new accounts with the same names (before rename old profile folders!) and attach the old profiles to them or copy information from old ones to new ones.
Notes.
1. Actions mentioned above was performed in NT4(SP5). I’m not sure about SP6 and Win2000.
2. Also system registry wasn’t checked. We simply run RegClean developed by MS corp.
Aivars
We had a problem with obtaining system Administrator password of offline machine, since our “bright” users had lost it. We looked for way how to crack lost Administrator logon password during three days… Well, solution was very simple.
You just have to take out primary hard disk ( C: ) and put it in the some other machine as second hard disk for example D: After that you have full access to information on second disk, but that is not the point. You have to look for files (use search) Sam and Sam.log (location - directory {SecondHardDiskLetter:}\WINNT\System32\config) on second hard disk (it’s not possible to access (include copy) Sam.* files on primary hard disk). After that you just rename them or (re)move them it does not matter. Then you take your disk back to its original machine and start your work as Administrator without password. NT will create files Sam and Sam.log all over again. During this process user accounts will be lost, but that is not a big problem, profiles are still there, you just make new accounts with the same names (before rename old profile folders!) and attach the old profiles to them or copy information from old ones to new ones.
Notes.
1. Actions mentioned above was performed in NT4(SP5). I’m not sure about SP6 and Win2000.
2. Also system registry wasn’t checked. We simply run RegClean developed by MS corp.
Aivars
is to floppy boot and bin them then restart. This only works with FAT partitions unless you have a floppy that reads NTFS.