Password??

[PPRuNe Pop]

Recovery Console. I have an instruction whilst using recovery console for a administrators password to deal with a hdd. I have never used one for operating windows and I am currently scratching head - I just do not have one - any thoughts please? If I press enter that just goes all the way to another re-boot.

[mixture]

Have you tried just pressing enter ? :cool:

Otherwise if you've lost it, you'll have to try one of those password recovery tools.

[green granite]

I believe this might work but obviously do a registry back up first but if you cant get into windows at all I don't know a way of doing it, If you're not happy about using 'regedit, then don't try it.

I found this tweak on the Internet to alter the Registry so a password is not required to get into the Recovery Console. I have proven this tweak works as intended by switching between the default registry DWORD setting ('0') and the tweaked DWORD setting ('1'). When the DWORD value is set to '1' I can access all functions of the Recovery Console but when set to the default value of '0' no password allows access to the Recovery Console. The tweak I used is as follows:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\setup\recoveryconsole]
"securitylevel"=dword:00000001
"setcommand"=dword:00000000
---

The DEFAULT value for "securitylevel"=dword:00000001 is '00000000' (zero).

[Milo Minderbinder]

Presumably you're using Win7 or Vista
This problem always appears as the Administrator account is disabled by default and so never set up, therefore no password - and you can't log into it
However it appears first in the list of logins when you try to access the recovery console
If you look again, you'll see that its actually a drop-down list of accounts - simply go down the list to find your normal user account and log into that


The fix that GG refers to above really only applied to early versions of XP which were preinstalled by large scale manufacturers - and all had the same security SIDs. It also affected the ability to login with remote desktop / remote help.. I can remember actually finding the problem and personally discovering that fix during checks of trial builds during a training session for our call centre staff! We reported it back to Microsoft, but doubtless others also discovered it independently.