Forgotten Vista admin password - Help!

Crixus00 · 4 Oct 2009 at 20:16

Hi Guys,

Ok, my bro has forgotten his password for his pc and ofc he is the admin. How can we retrieve the account? he has tried long and hard to remember but to no avail. i can get in on my account on his pc but have no privileges.

He has nothing on there of any importance. I tried to insert the windows Vista disc in and format the hard drive but ofc it prompts for admin password...

So, please guys, what can i do?

Thanks.

Tr Insanity · 4 Oct 2009 at 20:38

If it comes to it , you could always stick the HD into another pc and format it.

Or boot from a live cd and format it

JonJ678 · 4 Oct 2009 at 21:07

Its relatively easy to find a torrent for a cd image that removes passwords from windows, but I probably can't link to it. Despite it being free and non-pirated, the same place you find it will probably have less legal torrents as well.

Alternatively, google found me this as the 4th link for "remove windows password iso"

theheyes · 4 Oct 2009 at 21:08

Boot from the Vista disc (don't insert it and try to run from within Windows) and you'll be fine.

bledd · 4 Oct 2009 at 21:34

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php?type=livecd

download the vista one

boot burn with imgburn, boot from cd

it'll display the password, as long as it's a a-z,0-9 password, (ie, no $$%%@ etc)

Col_M · 4 Oct 2009 at 22:38

I agree with bledd, used ophcrack a number of times now and it works perfectly.

sirlemonhead · 4 Oct 2009 at 23:25

ophcrack isn't the right tool for this. It might not work if the password is complex.

Just use the tool here http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ to blank the password. Simple and effective.

bledd · 5 Oct 2009 at 09:45

sirlemonhead said:
ophcrack isn't the right tool for this. It might not work if the password is complex.

Just use the tool here http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ to blank the password. Simple and effective.

I said in my post it'll work with easy passwords only, plus if you have encrypted files then blanking your password will render the files useless.

ophcrack is the safest way of doing it

linktoinsanity · 5 Oct 2009 at 10:15

That ophcrack is a brilliant tool for linking.

Will come in handy, thanks bledd.

Crixus00 · 5 Oct 2009 at 10:17

Thanks everyone, i'll give these options a go tonight. Will let you know how i get on (or if need any more help

) ).

Cheers,

Crixus00 · 6 Oct 2009 at 08:19

Problem solved!

I intitially tried ophcrack but it didnt work for me.

I then moved onto http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ and after some fiddling and performing a pc shut down, it worked.

Thanks for all the comments and help, much appreiciated.