News Focus
News Focus
icon url

sbt48

05/26/11 9:53 PM

#23858 RE: Stocks4John #23856

Stocks4John: try "admin" for the password. I think that is a default password for many programs.
icon url

SRV-90

05/26/11 10:13 PM

#23861 RE: Stocks4John #23856

When Vista first came out I had to help someone who bought a refurbished Sony laptop and it was in a middle eastern language for some reason!

I found a program called "Enable Admin.exe" that allowed me to enable the admin account. I had to do this by getting into a command prompt by using the Vista disk and once there I was able to get to a USB flash drive and run it.

Not sure if that will work or not with service packs on Vista as I believe they might have provisioned something to stop that.

I know there's a way with XP to get in and change passwords during a repair installation but doubt it works with Vista..

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/lpmarticle.asp?id=305

Here's one for Vista

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/102005-reset-user-account-password.html
icon url

momentum-rich

05/27/11 1:42 AM

#23868 RE: Stocks4John #23856

To reset a forgotten administrator password, follow these steps:

1. Boot from Windows PE or Windows RE and access the command prompt.

2. Find the drive letter of the partition where Windows is installed. it is usually C:.

3. Type the following command (replace “c:” with the correct drive letter if Windows is not located on C:):
copy c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe c:\
This creates a copy of sethc.exe to restore later.


4. Type this command to replace sethc.exe with cmd.exe:
copy /y c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe


5. Reboot your computer and start the Windows installation where you forgot the administrator password.


6. After you see the logon screen, press the SHIFT key five times.


7. You should see a command prompt where you can enter the following command to reset the Windows password
net user your_user_name new_password
If you don’t know your user name, just type net user to list the available user names.


8. You can now log on with the new password.


replace sethc.exe with the copy you stored in the root folder of your system drive in step 3. For this, you have to boot up again with Windows PE or RE because you can’t replace system files while the Windows installation is online. Then you have to enter this command:

copy /y c:\sethc.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe