5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password

Posted on November 1, 2007 at 2:44 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Hack Passwords series!

How to remove, crack, or break a forgotten Excel xls password
5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password
Recover, crack and hack email passwords for MS Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc
Forgot your Windows password? How to recover your lost password? Try Login Recovery!
How to determine your router’s default password
Cell Phone Hacks – How to hack your cell phone (Samsung, LG, etc)

I recently helped a client recover his forgotten Windows Administrator password by using a couple of different tools. We eventually were able to reset the Administrator password to a blank password so that he could log into Windows. Unfortunately, there is no “one” way to reset a Windows password and depending on what version of Windows you are running, you might have to try different things.

There are already so many articles written on how to recover or reset a password that I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, but instead will guide you to the best online resources that I used to crack my Windows XP password.

1. Ophcrack Live CD – My favorite ways to blank out or crack a Windows password is to use a Linux Live CD. These are special distributions of Linux that run directly from the CD (no installation required) and are specially designed for cracking Windows passwords. You can read the documentation to learn how to use it. Simply burn the ISO and boot using the CD and the program will get right to work. It won’t work, however, on very complicated password because it actually tries to determine the password rather than reset it.

2. Offline NT Password and Registry Editor – This is a very small program, only 3MB in size, that you can burn to a CD and boot to. It’ll auto-detect the Windows installation and the account names (that is if everything was installed in the default Windows directories). Using this program you can reset or blank out a Windows password, which means it doesn’t matter how long or complicated it is. I tried this program on Vista and it would not load afterwards, so definitely only use for Windows XP or earlier!

3. Login Recovery – Login Recovery is a web site that has a program that you can either download onto a floppy disk or a cd and that you use to boot up with. You’ll get a list of account and some numbers when the program runs. Take those numbers and enter them onto the web site and Login Recovery will crunch it through it’s system to find out password for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista. I have tried this site and it did not work for my password, which was 11 characters and mostly symbols, numbers, and letters. However, if the password was something simple, they will probably be able to crack it.

4. John The Ripper – Another free password cracker that works on Windows, Linux and Macs, so it’s useful for any Mac or Linux user who wants to recovery a password. Pretty easy to use and comes with good instructions, so most people can follow along.

5. Knoppix STD – G4TV has a good article on another Linux distro you can download and use to crack your Windows password. Follow the detailed instructions he gives and if the password is not too long or difficult, it should be able to crack it!

As you can tell, the best ways to crack a Windows password is using Linux! It might be a little too techie for some people, but it’s definitely worth it if you want to avoid having to re-install Windows and lose all of your data! Any questions, post a comment!

Make sure to check out my article on how to crack an Excel password and how to hack Yahoo and MSN IM passwords.

[tags]windows password, windows password recovery, reset windows password, administrator password, forgot windows password, forgot admin password, windows xp admin password[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

33 Responses to “5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password”

nate said on : November 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 am

There’s also a great tool for XP (that is no longer being distributed, Microsoft got the rights to it and integrated parts of it into Vista), you can recover passwords and your whole system (I’ve had to use it several times) with Winternals ERD Commander. — It’s a Windows-like environment that lets you recover and restore system file, defrag, backup hard disks, and recover passwords =)

jms said on : March 27th, 2008 at 1:33 am

i forget the password of amdimistrator of windows xp sp 2
please me to come out from this probleme

Soumya said on : July 11th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

Just log in to windows. Go to Run and type ‘control userpasswords’. click the administrator and reset password

dj don said on : July 28th, 2008 at 3:34 am

can you tel me how to find the admin password in Windows 98, i do not want to reset it or create a new admin login.

Ken B said on : August 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am

Thanks for this information.

Bharath said on : December 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Please somebody help me! One of my friend has put a administrator password on my laptop, and he has created a limited user account, I even can’t delete the files form c:\. can any one tell me how to crack the admin password from the limited user account.

Erica said on : December 16th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

I have password protected an excel spreadsheet in vista and cannot remember the password. Please help!

Fenton said on : February 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

The link to #2, the offline NT editor, no longer works.

windows said on : March 6th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Forgot Your Windows Password?
A lot of people think that after having lost their Windows admin password, they absolutely have to reinstall their OS. Let me tell you something: They are wrong! Here I’m posting a few methods / utilities which can be used to recover Windows password:

1st Method:

The first thing which you check if you forget login password. When we install Windows, it automatically creates an account “Administrator” and sets its password to blank. So if you have forget your user account password then try this:

Start system and when you see Windows Welcome screen / Login screen, press ++ ~~keys twice and it’ll show Classic Login box. Now type “Administrator” (without quotes) in Username and leave Password field blank. Now press Enter and you should be able to log in Windows.~~

Now you can reset your account password from “Control Panel -> User Accounts”.

Same thing can be done using Safe Mode. In Safe Mode Windows will show this in-built Administrator account in Login screen.

2th Method:

There are many 3rd party utilities which claim to recover forgotten Windows password:

Windows Password Recovery Tool Service: windowspasswordsrecovery.com

WWindows Password Recovery Tool is a program that works instantly to remove any lost or forgotten password. Simply boot your PC from the supplied Boot CD, and get access to forgotten Windows and administrator passwords in just seconds. Their method is so much faster/easier, and works great!

http://windowspasswordsrecovery.com

alec said on : April 13th, 2009 at 2:49 am

Windows Password Reset is very easy and useful tool to reset local administrator and user passwords on a Windows XP system.

Website: resetwindowspassword.com

Get started with the download – 3 simple steps:

Step 1 – Download program.
Step 2 – Burn your Windows Password Reset CD: To burn your CD, you’ll need a blank CD-R and the .ISO file of Windows Password Reset.
Step 3 – Put in your newly created CD and remove your Windows password.

Juan Boudreau said on : May 19th, 2009 at 8:51 am

If you use active directory in your enterprise environment you may want to offer user intiated password reset.

We use AD in our company and we implemented desktop authority password self service found here:

http://www.scriptlogic.com/pro.....lf-service

When a user needs to reset a password, they answer a few security challenge questions before being permitted to change the password.

tom said on : August 12th, 2009 at 2:54 am

I have downloaded Windows Password Recovery Tool 2.0. It worked great!
Note: This information is from: http://www.instructables.com/i.....s-NT-2000/

tannpopo said on : September 16th, 2009 at 4:14 am

Last week , I was confronted with the password problem. Eventually , I solved my problem with the help of windows password Reseton the recommendation of http://pcsupport.about.com/od/.....covery.htm It’s great!

tannpopo said on : September 16th, 2009 at 4:17 am

Your best is to rememeber your password! If you really can not reset your windows admin password, I recommend a free download called Windows Password Reset at http://www.resetwindowspassword.com.

It is very useful for novice! Hope it helps! You simply do as follows:

Step one – Download the program (not free, but worth it)
Step two – Burn your Windows Password Reset 6.0 CD:To burn your CD, you’ll need a blank CD-R and the .ISO file of Windows Password Reset 6.0.
Step three – Put in your newly created CD and remove your Windows password.

If having some questions,you can read carefully: resetwindowspassword.com/how_it_works/how_it_works.htm

Mehedi Hasan said on : November 1st, 2009 at 11:35 pm

In windows xp sp-2 I forget my logon and administrative password. plz how I do I get back into Windows?

shoaib said on : December 8th, 2009 at 8:05 am

hey ever tried “hiren”- i personally think its the best program out their to play with your machine.Its nasty but the reality is that you can login into any pc and do what ever you want,even if you don’t have a login password,n ofcourse resetting a password is just a mere tool in it,n the list is endless as the possibilities with this program i guess are endless.but it costs

tanpopo said on : December 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 am

There’s a way to reset the password and it doesn’t involve reformatting and reinstalling Windows. The solution is called Windows Password Reset 7.0. It can reset almost all Windows passwords in seconds. It is a great windows password recovery tool . you can log in again just in one second. It also support windows 7 password reset.

ych said on : December 28th, 2009 at 3:24 am

My favorite is using software to reset windows password, I found windows password unlocker on the internet a couple days ago, it is very convenient for windows password recovery.

Sofia said on : January 6th, 2010 at 11:39 am

How can I crack a Windows 7 password? Is it a lot harder that Windows XP?

Tink said on : January 17th, 2010 at 9:33 pm

I have used a windows password recovery software to reset windows password to blank, without needing to reinstall or reformat the windows os, with no data loss! The tool is “Any Windows Password Recovery 3.0 “,its easier, you could have a try. The link to the soft: anypasswordrecovery.com

Dave said on : January 19th, 2010 at 8:23 pm

I am at wits end! I forgot my Administrator password and none of these solutions are working for me! Some are too complicated. Can GeekSquad fix it for me?

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