How To Change Your Win98 Pass If You Forgot It...

If you haven't moved on to the newer versions of the windows operation systems, and have windows 98, but forgot your password, this can help you... I'm not sure if this works with windows 95, because I only tested this on my windows 98 (SE) computer... You must have local access for this to work...

How does this help you?
Let's say you forgot your password... You want all of your settings, but you can't login because it says you typed in the wrong password... This is very simple, and you should beable to do it because of the lack of local security on windows 98...

How did I find this out?
I always try to reduce startup time on my pc... I was wondering why a certain program would always start up, and after I disabled it, I realized that I had been using selective startup for over two years... I didn't know what would happen under normal startup, because the last time I used it, it crashed... I attempted an (almost) normal startup, and my password was no longer valid (I forgot the old, old one)... I didn't want to start another user, so I decided to experiment... I saw the password lists tree, and disabled it... I no longer needed a password to login... I wanted a password, because it was habit, and then tested this precedure I developed several times... It worked each time... Needless to say, I can now go to a friends house and temporarly change his password quickly, and with no need to install anything or any knowledge of his password, if he has Windows 98... The other versions of windows (NT, 2000, XP) are slightly more secure against this (I'm guessing - as they require a password to login most of the time, and administrative stuff), so this will probably not work on them...

What to do...
This is simple... I'll break it down into a few simple steps...
1) Turn on your PC
2) Wait for Windows to boot up
3) Click cancel on the login screen
4) Goto Start > Run
5) Type in 'Msconfig' and press enter
6) Click the 'System.ini' tab
7) Scroll Down To 'Password Lists' and Expand it
8) Uncheck the box with the password you forgot
9) Click 'Ok' - It should say you need to restart, but you can click No (I haven't tried Yes yet)
10) Goto Start > Log off
11) Select your user name at the login prompt (The password field should be disabled)
12) Press 'Ok'

You are now logged in. You can change your password via standard procedures... I'll list it here to refresh your memory...

1) Goto Start > Settings > Control Panel
2) Double click the passwords icon
3) Click 'Change Windows Password...'
4) Fill in your new password (old password should be blank)
5) Press 'Ok' (It should say successful)

If you run Msconfig again, it should have a new check box for the same user, and should save the data in a new .pwl file.

If you did all of this, you should have successfully changed your lost Windows 98 Password...


Side Effects:
Since a new .pwl file is made, there are no chached passwords. Also, I had to mess with my modem a bit to get it to work again (disabled checking for dial tone). Another good thing that happened was that my mouse's scroll wheel started to work again...


-Tim_axe

A simple registery hack, will grey out the cancel button...
Then what?

lol

can u tell me how to make cancel button grey then. plz

hmm interesting.. normally i just press the "Esc" button... hehehe

Yeah, Right now theres no point in changing the password if you could just press ESC or cancel... Ill try to look for some tweaks in school, Im off for now :)

Ok I know, Its pretty late to answer...
But anyways..

Here's the key:

[HKEY_LOCAL _MACHINE\Network\Logon]
Create a new DWORD,
name="MustBeValidated" value="1"

Reboot, and press cancel...........

I remember seeing a bit back somewhere and testing this (back when i was on Win95) a way to mess with the .pwl file in DOS... that way you can also back it up and restore the previous password.

Just rename all the .pwl files .xxx and your done. I still don't see the point of even having a password on win98.

I dont really see the point in running windoze at all...

For registry hacks visit regedit.com.

WTF??? :mad: Why is everyone suddenly flaming me here, now? I didn't copy/paste this! I found it out on my own, because my password was changed back after I messed with my start-up settings... It is useful in the sense that you don't have to change your desktop back, mess with your icons to get them looking right again! There are probably several ways to get this done, but this is the way that I discovered on my own!

BTW: I'm not mad at s0nIc, ac1dsp3ctrum, Dome, or at |337... blackmask is just supplying info based on what others were saying... I won't assign negative points to the others though... I'll let them voice their opinions freely, but I've noticed that somebody here hates/dislikes me, or at least (so far) two of my posts... :( I wish people would sign their names for all of their point things, and PM when they're pissed... That way I'd at least know who it is..., and what to do to make them happier...

-Tim_axe

WTF have I done now???

lets be very clear here....win9x password "protection" is not protection...period... all it does is log you on to your desktop settings...anyone can hit the esc button at the login dialog and have complete access to your files.

also, as has been said, deleting the pwl files makes the old passwords go away...then you just log on with your old user name and a new pwd....so you could do that...or someone else could ...but the point really is this...win9x/me have no built in security features for locally logged on users

you can prevent a casual attacker from obtain access to your files over a network, by disabling file sharing and if you must share files, you can enable passwords in the SHARE properties setting ...however, this is poor at best...and it's all or nothing....there's no granularity...