I accidentally unsubscribed from my work laptop's domain while having some phun(tm) with unencrypted wireless access points in an apartment building parking lot. I tried joining a workgroup but when I rebooted I couldn't log in to WinXP anymore. I tried using Auditor to capture the SAM last night and it was as simple as mounting hda1 and navigating to c:\windows\system32\config. I couldn't figure out how to get WLAN working and the laptop has no floppy drive so I don't think I can get the SAM off the computer. I'll be reading Irongeek's tutorial for John the Ripper tonight, though I may grab a 300mb text file for rainbowcrack instead since that's supposed to be way faster.

Unfortunately, I believe I'll need physical access to the domain if I want to join it again, even with the admin password. My account is locked until my next contract in a month and I have some hackering and crackering to do before then, so I'm just brute forcing the SAM to see if I can do it. I'm going to format it and tell them I got a Norton-crippling virus and didnt' want to take chances.

Word to the wise - don't unsubscribe from an inaccessible domain if you need it to log in! Whoops!