administrator login

[vsp]

cant remove programs or see control panel due to
restrictions (personal PC) dont know admin password.
never set one actually!
Question: is there a way to reset the admin password
without re imaging the hard drive?

 

[Mike Brannigan [MSFT]]

cant remove programs or see control panel due to
restrictions (personal PC) dont know admin password.
never set one actually!
Question: is there a way to reset the admin password
without re imaging the hard drive?

If you never set an Administrators password then there is the possibility
that it is actually <blank>.
Have you tried using a blank password

--
Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Brannigan [Microsoft]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights

Please note I cannot respond to e-mailed questions, please use these
newsgroups

 

[vsp]

Have tried blank , password, just about everything else
to no avail..... is there a way to edit the windows
registry or PE kernel and omit od reset the admin
password? other than resurfacing the Harddrive witht he
original OEM CD's reason being, therse over 20 GB of
data!

 

[Mike Brannigan [MSFT]]

If this is an OEM install then contact the OEM - they may use a default
password on all installs.

--
Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Brannigan [Microsoft]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights

Please note I cannot respond to e-mailed questions, please use these
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[vsp]

Yes it is an OEm and I did contact them , they dont set a
default pswd and there only response is to re image the
drive with the OEM CD's. but like I stated theres over
20GB of data that would need to be backed up, I would
think that MSFT would have a way of editing the admin
password whether that be the regisry or the PE kernel or
something!! even a few detailed hints would help!

 

[Mike Brannigan [MSFT]]

We do not support the brute force reset of the Administrator password or
provide tools to do this.
However there are number of third party products that can boot a Windows XP
PC and reset the local administrators password.

Some links to third party sites
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/locksmith.asp
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/erdcommander2002.asp?pid=erd
There are other tools from other companies available.
You could do a search on an Internet Search engine like www.google.com for
reset administrator password Windows XP
This produces lots of results.

--
Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Brannigan [Microsoft]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights

Please note I cannot respond to e-mailed questions, please use these
newsgroups

 

[Pavel]

With out the Administrators password you are not going to be able to do
much. But there is maybe a good news. If the partition with your data is
formatted in FAT32 then simply getting hold of a bootable diskette will
allow you copy out this data to another drive/partition directly from DOS.
All you need to know is how use COPY command. The only problem with this is
that if any data file name is 'long' name it will be trunctuated to 8.3. I
have never used it but even for that there is a solution called SULFNBK
program that comes with Windows98 boot disk.
If the format is NTFS then there are programs available that let you copy
data out. LSOFT and Winternals are two companies (that I know) that make
such a product. Both companies have a demo that will actual work. The LSOF
program has a browser like interface and the program from Winternals simply
allows you to use whatever means you want directly from DOS.
Once you get your data off the drive, do a fresh install and this time pay
attention to the Administrator's password.

 

[Tom G]

If I'm understanding correctly, this sounds like the same problem I had
after I built a new system last month and installed oem version of XP Pro.

Setup never asked for an admin's password. I set up 4 users during install
of xp and left passwords blank on all. When I tried to log on under
Administrator it kept saying "enter correct password" even though I left pw
field blank.

Using "method 2" at this link solved my problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;321305
Hope it can help you.

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

cant remove programs or see control panel due to
restrictions (personal PC) dont know admin password.
never set one actually!
Question: is there a way to reset the admin password
without re imaging the hard drive?

Hi

You might try to reset the local Administrator
password with one of the methods mentioned here:

http://securityadmin.info/noframes/faqget.asp#password