This is half rant, half request to get to the million dollar question just skip to the end. So I've been asked make sure several machines are up and running. Normally I would have made sure to avoid this since I'm not under contract to do IT work but they've managed to con me into it because If I don't do it it will cause problems for me down the road. Here's what I'm dealing with:

Several Windows Machines various versions (XP,Server2000,98)
The machines use local accounts only.
Each machine uses a single administrator account for everyone (*insert hand in face pic*).
And no one seems to know the correct administrative passwords for these machines.

And to make matters worse the won't let me just reformat (which they really need and would save me some hastle)

So.... How can I reset or blank the administrative password on these machines without being able to reformat and not just spending a lot of time to run a script to brute force it.



[Edited on June 9, 2007 at 8:47 PM. Reason : PS I'm tempted to punch the guy who set this up in the face if I ever meet him.]

6/9/2007 8:44:23 PM

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=reset+administrative+password+windows&btnG=Google+Search

6/9/2007 8:50:30 PM

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

6/9/2007 9:04:08 PM

Quote :

"Each machine uses a single administrator account for everyone (*insert hand in face pic*)."

Do you mean that everyone logs in with the same account, or all machines use the same password for the built-in administrator account? If its the latter, thats SOP. All built-in admin accounts should have the same password for simplicity's sake...unless you work at the NSA of something.

Overall though, there are a TON of options to reset the admin password on windows machines. In fact I'm pretty surprised you wanted to format the machines because of such a simple problem. The best one I've used is called ERD commander, which can be had off the torrent network or you can actually pat $$$ for it . Though I'm sure there are free ones out there too as mentioned above.

6/9/2007 9:05:36 PM

no I mean that everyone logs onto an administrative account with all aplicable rights and believe me it would be easier if they did have the same password, then I might actually know what it is for these machines

For all I know, because the accounts on these machines have administrative rights someone could have changed it and not told anyone

6/9/2007 9:12:44 PM

i thought for sure this was gonna be a Raige thread

6/9/2007 9:39:29 PM

Download Hiren's Boot CD. It had tons of utils on it including one to reset windows passwords.

6/10/2007 9:27:48 PM

ntpassword worked great, the documentation looked like it might be a pain in the ass to use but it wasn't

6/10/2007 10:15:37 PM

Quote :

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

6/10/2007 10:25:57 PM