Passwords

[Dick]

I received a computer running win 2000 from a friend who had upgraded. The
only users were himself (set up as an admin user) and Administrator. There
were NO passwords on the system.
Heeding the warning not to use the computor for routine functions while
logged on as an administrator, I set myself up as a user, with a password.
Now I cannot access either his old account, or the Administrator account. I
keep getting the message that either the login name or the password is
wrong. I have typed his name exactly as it appears as a user, or
"Administrator". The result is always the same.
There must be an easy fix for this. I am aware of the programs for
recovering a lost password, or bypassing it, but there were none in the
system.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I received a computer running win 2000 from a friend who had upgraded. The
only users were himself (set up as an admin user) and Administrator. There
were NO passwords on the system.
Heeding the warning not to use the computor for routine functions while
logged on as an administrator, I set myself up as a user, with a password.
Now I cannot access either his old account, or the Administrator account. I
keep getting the message that either the login name or the password is
wrong. I have typed his name exactly as it appears as a user, or
"Administrator". The result is always the same.
There must be an easy fix for this. I am aware of the programs for
recovering a lost password, or bypassing it, but there were none in the
system.

It is a common belief that some Windows installations run
without a password. This is wrong. All Windows accounts
have a password, even if it is a blank password. Did you try
a blank password?

 

[Dick]

I have tried typing spaces, or tabbing through the password box, but perhaps
I do not know how to enter a blank password. Prior to my setting up myself
as a user I had no problems

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
After solving your problem, think for a moment about how
many sets of keys you have for your car and why it is more
than one. Now apply the same principle to your PC, create
a second admin account and lock its password away so
that you never ever lock yourself out again.

 

[computerguy]

I have a followup question.

A friend of mine had a similar problem on his Win2k system recently and I
went to www.loginrecovery.com and was able to retrieve his passwords. Using
the retrieved password, he was then able to log in and I subsequently set up
his system to not require a password (it is a personal PC which no one else
has access to). At the time, the Administrator password looked unfamiliar -
it wasn't all spaces but a series of random characters.

I decided to check the passwords for my own system (Win2k as well) since I
remember that I had set my user password and I had left the Administrator
password as blank (I think). However, the retrieved password for each
account was completely different!

My question is how these could have been changed! I certainly did not set
the passwords that were retrieved - these seem to be random characters. Note
that I have also set my system up to not require passwords. Is it possible
that when I did this Win2k changed the passwords?

Curious...
-GB

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You need to be aware of a few things:
a) There is no such thing as "no password" under Win2000.
At best it's a blank password.
b) Windows does not change passwords by itself. Never ever.
c) It is not possible to retrieve a Windows password and
know for sure that this was the original password. The
retrieved password may be one of several that happen
to work - see next paragraph.
d) The passsword you enter is modified by an encryption
algorithm before it is stored. Let's assume your password
is "password2006" and that it gets translated to "abcxyz"
before it is stored. It is now possible to construct passwords
other than "password2006" that will translate to "abcxyz".
Your friend found one of these "duplicates".

Planning ahead and creating a spare admin account is still
the best way to go!

 

[computerguy]

Hi Pegasus,

Thanks for the tips. In your item (d), by "spare admin account" do you
simply mean another user account with admin priviledges or something else?

TIA,
-GB

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I mean another account with full admin privileges that you
do not normally use. When the main admin account becomes
unusable for some reason, use the second one to reset the
password to the primary one, much like the spare house
key you have planted somewhere.