Admin Username

  • Thread starter Thread starter cjobes
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cjobes

Hi all,

Does anybody know a quick way to get the username for the admin account on a
2000 box in a stand alone setup? We know the password but someone changed
the name and can't remember it.

Thanks,

Claus
 
If there is one more user account that you know on the box you could logon
and find out what the users are present on the machine. If not you are
reduced to break and enter tactics.
 
There is no other user configured.


Sundaram Narayanan said:
If there is one more user account that you know on the box you could logon
and find out what the users are present on the machine. If not you are
reduced to break and enter tactics.
Click to expand...
 
Try this:

Boot the computer into the recovery console or anything that gives you
access to the hard drive. Navigate to the documents and settings
directory. You should be able to see the name of everyone who logged
onto the computer based upon the folders that were created here.

Hope this helps.

Matt Wagner
Enterprise Engineering Center
Microsoft Corporation

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Matt,

Thanks for answering. It's a good idea but it doesn't work in this case. The
user changed the login name for the admin. When you do that the user dir is
not changed. I did however found a program that pulls all usernames from the
sam and got the box up again.

Claus
 
cjobes said:
Hi all,

Does anybody know a quick way to get the username for the admin account on a
2000 box in a stand alone setup? We know the password but someone changed
the name and can't remember it.

Thanks,

Claus
Click to expand...

Easy:
- Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk
(www.bootdisk.com)
- Run ntfsdos.exe (www.sysinternals.com) if necessary.
- Navigate to c:\documents and settings and check the
profile folder names. One of them is your admin name.
- Plan ahead and create a second admin account!
 
Not easy. If you would know your stuff you would know that if you change the
administrator name after the documents and settings subfolder has been
created, it will not create a new folder nor change it when the
administrator account name is changed.
 
Good point. However, there is more than one way to
skin this rabbit:

- Boot the machine with the well-known password resetting
boot disk fromhttp://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html.
It will show you the current accounts.

- Alternatively, boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk,
copy the SAM file to floppy disk, then examine it on
some other machine with a binary viewer. The account
names are unencoded and are clearly visible.

Now if you know your stuff then you can probably think
of a few additional methods!
 
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