As a fail safe method you can put the drive in a USB to
IDE case, or install the drive as a secondary disk on an
existing system (w2k, or even 98). Transfer the files you
need onto another disk. As to actually recovering the
system there are password recovery programs that work on
NT but I haven't seen a free one for 2000. Try keyword
2000, password, crack, linux floppy.

258289 Windows 2000 Logon Passwords
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=258289

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