HELP! WindowsXP Home access

[aspinwing]

Having just returned to my computer after a six month contract in Central America, with Mrs A. I find that I cannot access two user accounts. We had taken her desktop and a laptop but left my computer for the house sitters use.

There are four user accounts: mine, Mrs A, A junior and house-sitter. Mrs A and I have full administrator access, junior is restricted and HS is very restricted. Not matter what passwords we try Mrs A and I have no access. We are asked to try our passwords again. There is access through junior’s account (with password) and HS’s accounts (which does not have a password). What happened to the two passwords? I suspect that they time-expired but in that case why didn’t junior’s expire. He has not had access to this computer in the six months.

In the ’98 and prior versions there was a password file that you could delete and then start over but it no longer seems to exist. I am using junior’s account so he may not have access rights to system files.

Any thoughts on how I can access these two user accounts, short of reloading the system, will be greatly appreciated.

A

[Saab Dastard]

So what happened to the original Administrator account?

You should have been prompted for an Administrator password when it was set up, so try that. You might even have left it blank.

There are bootable Linux-based CDs and diskettes that can access the SAM database and reset the account passwords (I have used this to good effect on NT4, 2K and XP). You might be able to download an image and create the relevant bootable image.

"Granted physical access to a Windows 2000 workstation, the IDE image of Trinux (NTFS file system support already included) has the utilities at hand for a user to extract the SAM database. (The SAM database contains user accounts and associated passwords.) The rather simple steps to do so: boot Trinux remove the boot disk and insert a second disk fmount cp /hda1/winnt/system32/config/sam /floppyfumount feed the results from the floppy into the latest version of L0phtCrack – LC3 (available at http://www.atstake.com/research/lc3) Whether the above steps are taken by a system administrator to recover the lost Administrator account’s password ..."

SD

[aspinwing]

SD

Thanks for the info.

I found another way into it.

By pressing F8 during bootup you can get into the 'safe mode' although it isn't widely know. I was onto my local expert this morning when his office opened.

Thanks for the help.

A