Computer Question

[Liebgott]

So at work, this one guy has two laptops that he has forgot the password to the accounts and asked if I could help, he wants them reformatted but wants documents off of them. Do you guys know of any program that can get into Windows without the password?

Thanks

[Leomhann]

a rock

[Puddle]

http://www.openwall.com/passwords/micro ... 2003-vista

But you can do this:
http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sudhir/Hackin ... _Hack.html

I did a similar thing to my buds 98. Went into safemode and deleated the password file.
Can't remember what it was now...

[Guy Montag]

First thing I would try is booting with a CD bootable OS like Knoppix and see if you can find the files and copy them on a flash drive or something to that effect. You didn't mention which version of windows the laptops had.

[Liebgott]

I assume its Windows XP since they are kinda new, but he never told me, and I have Knoppix and another one like that, but not sure where to look exactly. Thanks for the help guys

[Cheeto]

Almost ALL of the time you can just boot into safe mode (hit F8 as the machine boots and keep tapping it till you see the safe mode selection screen) and then that will show a 'secret' account called Administrator that has no password but can remove or change passwords on existing accounts.

[Guy Montag]

Thats only necessary on XP home, on XP Pro you can just type it in. Of course he said accounts plural so I assumed they'd forgotten the Administrator password, which of course isn't necessarily blank. Dell's sometimes have a administrative account called 'Owner'.

If none of the above works, here is a set of instructions which requires a XP CD and the product keys to be re-entered.

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/p...cle.asp?ID=305

Or if you want the easy no risk way out, this website has a service which you either pay to get the password decrypted immediately, or wait 3 days and you can look it up.

http://www.loginrecovery.com/

[Cheeto]

Also, google for instructions on how to read the password from the SAM file using Linux.

[Shade-of-Grey]

if you take a large magnet and put it up against the harddrive, it will suck up the information, you can then put it onto another harddrive by waving it over that one.

[HS the Wasp]

If he pulls out his penis, in your presence, and then slaps it on the keyboard that will do the trick.