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
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- Recover, crack and hack email passwords for MS Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc
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31 Responses to “5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password”
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December 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
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 =)
i forget the password of amdimistrator of windows xp sp 2
please me to come out from this probleme
Just log in to windows. Go to Run and type ‘control userpasswords’. click the administrator and reset password
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.
Thanks for this information.
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.
I have password protected an excel spreadsheet in vista and cannot remember the password. Please help!
The link to #2, the offline NT editor, no longer works.
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.
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/products/password-self-service
When a user needs to reset a password, they answer a few security challenge questions before being permitted to change the password.
I have downloaded Windows Password Recovery Tool 2.0. It worked great!
Note: This information is from: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Reset-Recover-Forgotten-Windows-NT-2000/
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/toolsofthetrade/tp/prem-windows-password-recovery.htm It’s great!
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
In windows xp sp-2 I forget my logon and administrative password. plz how I do I get back into Windows?
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
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.
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.
How can I crack a Windows 7 password? Is it a lot harder that Windows XP?
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
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?
The dilema here is, the more ways to crack the password, the fewer ways there are to really protect a file. Looks like the only effective way to protect a file is to save it on a USB stick when the computer is offline, then take the USB stick out, put it in a safe and them bury it. Ah, technology.
Hey, I got locked out of my computer several days ago. I tried several free software. It took me two days and got quite messy. Unfortunately none of them work for me. Finally I made it work with Reset Windows Password 1.3. The good news is that it works. The bad news is it is not free.
Can access the administrator password while i am logged in the limited user account?
Windows Password Reset Kit 1.5 offers an ISO image download with which you can burn a CD and easily reset the administrator password.
reset-windows-password.net