removing adminstrator password seting for legit purpose

[Rick]

Hi

I got quite a problem here. A friend just brought me a old NEC Versa 6200MX
laptop,he just purchased from Ebay. It seems the previous owner did not
clean the drive prior to shipping and that's were the problem starts. It
appears he was a part of a domain and has security passwords on all
accounts. And as you probably guessed the passwords were not provided. The
supplier were it was purchased was a clearing house and they don't have it
either.

After a lot of searching I form a program that reset the guest password and
at least let me access the drive through safe mode. However I cant do much
there as of course it,s not allowed. I can get to regedit.

My first question were do I go in regedit to delete or reset the
administrator accounts to open access?

My next question is probably the best one. I don't have a clue on how they
loaded Windows 2000 in the first pace as the drive has no cd rom nor network
card or port. It does have a pcima slot but of course don't recognize me
network card. I do have ( and don't know why) a small C9 pin cable that fit
into a port and on the other end have a network plug on the end that does
plug into my router. If I would format the drive how would I get the device
to work? I do have a floppy drive and have the 4 disk setup disks

Do to the obvious security issues, if you would like to email me with a
answer let me know

Any advise appreciated.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi

I got quite a problem here. A friend just brought me a old NEC Versa 6200MX
laptop,he just purchased from Ebay. It seems the previous owner did not
clean the drive prior to shipping and that's were the problem starts. It
appears he was a part of a domain and has security passwords on all
accounts. And as you probably guessed the passwords were not provided. The
supplier were it was purchased was a clearing house and they don't have it
either.

After a lot of searching I form a program that reset the guest password and
at least let me access the drive through safe mode. However I cant do much
there as of course it,s not allowed. I can get to regedit.

My first question were do I go in regedit to delete or reset the
administrator accounts to open access?

My next question is probably the best one. I don't have a clue on how they
loaded Windows 2000 in the first pace as the drive has no cd rom nor network
card or port. It does have a pcima slot but of course don't recognize me
network card. I do have ( and don't know why) a small C9 pin cable that fit
into a port and on the other end have a network plug on the end that does
plug into my router. If I would format the drive how would I get the device
to work? I do have a floppy drive and have the 4 disk setup disks

Do to the obvious security issues, if you would like to email me with a
answer let me know

Any advise appreciated.

You cannot load Win2000 with the 4 Recovery Console diskettes.
They only get you into a mode designed to perform certain basic
repairs. You need the Win2000 CD ROM to reload Windows
and you also need a valid product key.

You write "It seems the previous owner did not clean the drive prior
to shipping and that's were the problem starts." Not really. If I bought
a machine from a stranger then I would format its disk immediately
and start a fresh. I would never rely on the old installation - it might
have more viruses than a dog has fleas. If you still insist then you can
reset the administrator's password with a boot disk from here. I wouldn't.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

Buying a laptop without a CD drive will make life much, much
harder for you. Loading Win2000 is difficult and loading new
applications will be painful. Here is how you can load Win2000:

1. Buy a $5.00 adapter that lets you connect your laptop disk
to a standard IDE cable.
2. Remove the laptop disk and install it as a slave disk in some
Win2000/XP PC. Note that if you connect the laptop disk
back to front then you will fry it.
3. Format the laptop disk as a FAT32 partition.
4. Mark it as "active".
5. Copy the i386 folder of your Win2000 CD to an i386 folder
on that hard disk.
5. Return the laptop disk to the laptop.
6. Boot the laptop with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com.
7. Run these commands to start the WinXP setup process:
smartdrv
i386\winnt
8. Convert the partition to NTFS if desired.

It's a lot of trouble compared to buying a CD drive . . .

 

[Rick]

And I agree with you entirely. Most situations I would do that. However with
the limitations of this machine, no USB or cd rom, my choices were slim. My
hopes were to gain access to the setup files that may be on the hard drive
now and load a fresh copy that way, then delete the old one.

Unless I am doing something wrong, I used the software from the link you
provided and got the guest account to open, but not the administrator
account. The guest account don't allow me to do much. That's why I was
inquiring if there was a registry fix perhaps that might work.

I believe part of the problem is that the machine is set up for 2 domains
instead of just the normal mshome, ms work etc. Not being versed in
networking I don't know for sure how it's set up.

Thanks for the reply and any other thoughts appreciated
Rick

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

As I wrote in my first reply, you should use the Nordahl
boot disk to set the administrator's password to a blank.
Setting the password of the guest account to a blank is
fairly useless.

I do not know if your laptop has a recovery partition
or not. Some laptops do, others don't. You can probably
check this out on the NEC site.

 

[Rick]

HI

I did use the program you suggested, but only succeeded in opening the guest
account.

With the administrator account ,it allowed my to remove the password and
save it, but when I boot up to Windows 2000 the only account I can use is
the guest account which offers limited permissions. Administrator account
will not log in.

I also retried it with setting a password with no change.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Under Win2000 you can rename the file
C:\WINNT\system32\config\sam to something else.
When you next log on, you will have exactly one
account: administrator, with a blank password.

Here are a few ways to rename this file:
- If the system partition uses the FAT file system:
boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from
www.bootdisk.com.
- Temporarily install the disk as a slave disk in some
other Win2000/XP PC.
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD
(http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download)
To make a Bart PE CD takes a fair bit of time but the
CD is a very powerful tool for system administrators.

 

[Rick]

Ok Will give it a try

Thanks for your help

If this thing had a USB port I would not be having all this trouble. I do
have a external cdrw but its for USB only

Thanks again