Laptop has put a password on Xp...Somehow?

Delvis

Delvis

Delvis

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Sorry, I had to post this in this sub forum as well as the laptop one....As I don't think many people use the laptop part of the forums to be hoenst. So sorry for the re-post :)

Howdy...

Right, I got home tonight, and I thought to myself "I'll put this extra stick of RAM in my mothers Laptop that I have laying around, as it may make it a tad quicker"...

So, I go ahead and do this, boot the system up which is running Microsoft XP Pro, and suddenly there is a logon screen? Asking for a password?

They (mother or boyfriend) have not set a password up on the laptop...So, is it SOMEHOW () possible for RAM to put passwords on XP installs? Because the hardware has changed or?

I have botted the system up again with the original RAM back in, and it does the same thing....I've tried booting to safe mode, and logging in as admin, without a password, to no joy...

Any ideas? What the hell has happened? They both swear they haven't put a password on...But how the hell can a stick of RAM add a password to a system? Unless I'm missing something.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.
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Is it possible, that the hard drive is that old, and battered....It has somehow trashed the registry?...
 
Last edited:
There are applications available which can blank the admin password from within which you could change/remove the user's password.
 
Sp00n said:
There are applications available which can blank the admin password from within which you could change/remove the user's password.
Click to expand...

yeah, I did see a couple, but obviously I haven't tried any, so wouldn't know which ones are better for the job...Or if it is just the hard drive dying, would there be any point?

Obviously people probably can't link to the tools for obvious reasons.
 
Tombo said:
Could try using this to find out the password.

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/
Click to expand...

do this..

probably was set to auto-login before, or someone's added password. and .net 1.1 was recently installed or something (stopping auto login from working)


ophcrack live cd is what you want mate, providing the password contrains a-z and 0-9 (ie, no @ symbols etc) it'll find it pretty quickly :) 1-5 mins usually


should always set a password on admin & user accounts, even if you are using auto-login :)
 
bledd. said:
do this..

probably was set to auto-login before, or someone's added password. and .net 1.1 was recently installed or something (stopping auto login from working)


ophcrack live cd is what you want mate, providing the password contrains a-z and 0-9 (ie, no @ symbols etc) it'll find it pretty quickly :) 1-5 mins usually


should always set a password on admin & user accounts, even if you are using auto-login :)
Click to expand...


Cheers, I'll give it a shot on Tuesday, as I'm running away to Germany for the weekend, so my mother will have to do without the lappy this weekend sadly.

I've downloaded the Ophcrack live cd anyway, so I'll give it a go.

It's just really weird, .net wasen't even installed I don't think, well, it might be if it comes with sp2? But I installed the o/s a few weeks ago now, and my mum wouldn't even know how to setup a password or install anything.

Really has baffled me! :p

But yeah, no worries, I'll give the cd a go soon :)
 
I used it recently for an old PC, I knew the password but forgot the case of the letters >:
 
Thanks everyone to who has helped, I will give it a shot when I get home over the weekend, and post back the results.

From what I've read and what everyone has said here, it should be able to give me access :)

Does anyone think it is at all possible that the hard drive has gone a bit wonky cause of it's age? And screwed with the registry somehow? As when I tried the 'last known good configuration settings' it booted up saying some registry files where corrupt, and it fixed them, apparently :p
 
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