Gaining access to a Windows 2000 Pro machine

[CBLong]

Hello gurus,

I have recently, and, I must add, completely legitimately, come into possession of a laptop with Win 2000 Pro installed. Unfortunately, I don't have the logon details for any of the user / admin accounts that may be set up on the machine. Therefore, I can't get past the initial 'log on to Windows' screen.

Is there any way that I can get access to this machine without having to install a different OS? (I don't have the original Win 2k install disk). I've no interest in getting access to any of the accounts' private files, so I'm hoping there may be a way to simply delete all of the accounts and start fresh, without having to overwrite the entire OS.

I've tried plugging the machine into my home network but, although it gets assigned an IP address by my router, it doesn't respond to pings while sitting at the logon screen - is that normal?

Next thing I plan to try is to boot it from a floppy / CD, and see if I can access anything on the C: drive. What should I expect to see / be able to do?

I'm a programmer by trade and am happy with moderately advanced networking concepts and working at a command prompt etc, so don't be shy with the tricky stuff! I don't claim any particular expertise in Windows administration, though...

Thanks for any advice,

cbl.

[ZH875]

What you need is the nice little boot disk that boots into Linux and allows you to change/delete passwords etc.

[Mac the Knife]

Try the System Rescue CD at http://www.sysresccd.org/

http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/systemrescuecd/systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.15.iso

Or the 911 Rescue disk - http://www.911cd.net/

http://www.911cd.net/911disks/rescue_soft/

Good luck!

[maxell]

try here (http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/) and download bd050303 unzip and use install.bat to write to floppy disc and boot the comp with the disc in the floppy drive just follow the prompts to remove admin password.
I have used the older version bd041205 on a couple of XP machines with good results but never tried it on win2k.

[CosmosSchwartz]

Just get a copy of Win2000 on cd if you can, choose repair and it bypasses all security, allowing you to edit the password files.

Actually, probably shouldn't have posted that!;)

[Mac the Knife]

Nice pointer maxell!

Also see Christope Grenier's http://www.cgsecurity.org/ for an NTFS R/W driver and PW change utility.

[Jinkster]

I got win2k pro if you need a copy - just give me a shout via PM.

[Spinflight]

You could try this old hackers trick....

Boot into MSDos and type rename *.pwd *.xxx. This renames the password file so that windows will create a new one and allow you to log on as though there are no users registered.

You can always just change the *.xxx file back to *.pwd to restore the 'security'.

[CBLong]

Lots of excellent advice there, thanks everyone. I had assumed that the machine wouldn't allow me read/write access to anything on C: if booting from a floppy, but it sounds like you (or some of you, at least!) are saying that's not the case?

I won't be able to have a go at this until the weekend, but I'll let you know how I get on...

Cheers!

cbl.

[CBLong]

Hi all,

Reporting back as promised...

I used Christophe Grenier's utility as linked above and it worked perfectly. I set the passwords to blank, as recommended, and had no problems at all.

Thanks all!

cbl.

[Conan the Librarian]

Now that it is fixed, you can experience the full, "I need another shave" break provided whilst 2K boots up! Good to see that you got it sorted :-)


Conan

[Mac the Knife]

Glad it worked.

PPRuNe to the rescue again!

Cheers!

Mac

"All tools are hammers. Except screwdrivers which are chisels."