password expired

[tulio]

help me, my administrator's password just expired, i still have acess
to the Guest user, but when i try to change the password it says Acess
Denied, what can i do?
thank you all.

 

[Gordon]

help me, my administrator's password just expired, i still have acess
to the Guest user, but when i try to change the password it says Acess
Denied, what can i do?
thank you all.

Log on with the built-in administrator account.
as you haven't bothered to give us any details, like which version of XP you
are running, in Home edition boot into safe Mode and log on as the
administrator. in Pro, at the welcome screen, press Ctl-alt-Del twice and do
the same. You can then re-set the password and set the parameters for expiry
or not, as you wish.

 

[tulio]

its Windows xp professionr sp2 PT-BR
and i alread tried logging onto Administrator, but it was deleted,
renamed or i forgot the password
Administrator account doesnt show up in the welcmoe screen in safe-
mode, and it wasnt supposed to happen, was it?

 

[Gordon]

its Windows xp professionr sp2 PT-BR
and i alread tried logging onto Administrator, but it was deleted,
renamed or i forgot the password
Administrator account doesnt show up in the welcmoe screen in safe-
mode, and it wasnt supposed to happen, was it?

At the welcome screen press Ctl-Alt-del twice and you will see the old W2K
style log-on dialog box. log on with the Administrator account using that,

 

[sgopus]

The default administrators password is set to never expire, so you must be
talking about your personal account with admin level authority.
The guest account has limited authority and can't change the admins account
password due to this restricted level, most likely you can't change the
guests password either, try to use the default admin account which unless you
purposely set a password is usually blank (just hit enter).

 

[Patrick Keenan]

help me, my administrator's password just expired, i still have acess
to the Guest user, but when i try to change the password it says Acess
Denied,

This really isn't a suprise, since the Guest account doesn't have those
rights.

what can i do?

Log onto the Administrator account - the one called Administrator - and
reset your password. If this is XP Home, you need to start in Safe Mode to
get to this.

If all else fails, you can find password reset utilities, many of which are
based on Linux boot CDs.

Note that if the OS is XP Pro, *and* if you also invoked encryption, you
will instantly and permanently lose access to the encrypted files or folders
when you change the password from outside the account.

The only ways to get it back are infrequently available - importing the
backed - up credentials, or using a recovery agent.

HTH
-pk

 

[Mick Murphy]

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Passoword recovery

 

[Mick Murphy]

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

 

[Charles May]

This really isn't a suprise, since the Guest account doesn't have those
rights.


Log onto the Administrator account - the one called Administrator - and
reset your password. If this is XP Home, you need to start in Safe Mode
to get to this.

If all else fails, you can find password reset utilities, many of which
are based on Linux boot CDs.

Note that if the OS is XP Pro, *and* if you also invoked encryption, you
will instantly and permanently lose access to the encrypted files or
folders when you change the password from outside the account.

Patrick,
Wouldn't the OP be able to access the encrypted files by setting the
password back to the original one? This is not a forgotton password but one
that has expired. I'm only asking because if a user has encrypted files and
they cannot be recovered by setting their password back to the original
if/when it expires, why would the OS allow you to set the Password Expires
bit in the User settings when using encrypted files or folders?

Charlie

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Patrick,
Wouldn't the OP be able to access the encrypted files by setting the
password back to the original one?

No, this does not work, and is a common misconception.

EFS (Encrypting File System) does not rely solely on the password, but on
account credentials, which are built from several inputs. You will not
duplicate the credentials by resetting the password.

You have to export the credentials at the time that you invoke encryption,
back them up and store them safely. Or, designate a recovery agent.

This is not a forgotton password but one that has expired.

Unfortunately that isn't a relevant difference.

If you change the password from outside the account, and do not have the
account credentials backed up or have a designated recovery agent, you will
instantly and permanently lose access to the encrypted data.

I'm only asking because if a user has encrypted files and they cannot be
recovered by setting their password back to the original if/when it
expires, why would the OS allow you to set the Password Expires bit in the
User settings when using encrypted files or folders?

User Beware.

It's the user's responsibility to educate themselves about EFS before
invoking it. There aren't safeguards. There is risk.

What you would do for the expired password is to import the backed-up
credentials after resetting the password. The problem is that many people
skip that step.

MS did a great job of making it easy to get strong encryption, but did not
do such a great job of wrapping up details around it, such as requiring
credential backup.


It's quite common for people to post questions about EFS, and unfortunately,
there are seldom happy stories attached to those questions.

HTH
-pk

 

[Charles May]

Thanks Patrick,
I have never used EFS but the conversation prompted the questions asked.
Thanks for the informative reply.

Charlie