XP Password

Hello, Many of you may not believe my story and I understand your position, I used to be very gullible and trusted everyone although thte world has taught me to question everything everyone and their motives. My story: My little brother is my computer guru! Whenever I had a question I turned to him. My brother was diagnosed with cancer in January. We did not know how bad it was and 2 weeks ago he had to have emergency surgery or he would have died. ALthough we know he may not live long the cancer will kill him eventually (he is only 36) we did the surgery. Anyway, I have his computer (laptop) and I cannot get into it because I cannot figure out his password. I have tried everything under the sun that i think he might have used but nothing works. He cannot talk and is somewhat in a coma like state and I cannot get the information from him. I mostly want to get to his music so that I can record some CD's for him to listen to while he is in the hospital but also because they may be other inrformation there like contacts for me to notify of his health. I understand if you don't believe me and that is okay, I will keep guessing at it. I do not want to change the password because something makes me want to know WHAT the password was, as there may be some sort of message there and I do not want to destroy that. IF you can help me I would appreciate it. The password HINT is no help to me, and I have tried logging on in safe mode but he has a password on the ADMIN levels too.

Thanks for your time and you can email me directly if you want (unless that is against the rules) at [email protected]

Sincerely
ELizabeth

Getting the password is a complex process if you don't know what you are doing and may take a long time if he has a strong password.

You might be better off recording music you know he likes....

Sorry to hear of this..... always saddening...... You have my condolences.....

There are tools out there (for free) to reset the admin password to null (no password). I will tell you where to get the tool but I will leave it to you to figure out how to use it. As my good friend Tiger has pointed out, it can be very dangerous to do this unless you know precisely what you're doing.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

Good luck.

--TH13

Hoss: She doesn't want to reset in case the password carries a message..... Unlikely, I'll grant you... This is a password cracking issue plain and simple...... It's safer than the reset.... But a tad more involved to say the least..... ;)

boot from a linux/unix cd and transfer the files out...I highley doubt there is a deep seated hidden message within a passowrd...but thats just me.

Boot from a Linux CD, copy the password file, delete the original.


The Admin account should now default to a blank password.


Crack the password file at your leisure.


You now have both the password, and full access to the machine.

My heartfelt condolances, my wife and I lost our 6 yr old son 18 months ago when he was run over by a semi. Using a live CD and grabbing the SAM file to crack is your best chance, as the others said it does take a bit of skill, maybe try a repair shop and explain your situation or maybe someone here on AO lives close or can recomend someone. Understand that if he used a strong password it may not be crackable in a reasonable amount of time. Good luck. I don't pray often anymore but I'll pray for your brother and family. Tim

google for l0pht or ERD Commander
figure it out for yourself from there

not the most complete guide but very much non-jargon -> http://www.thebroken.org/
what some people have suggested I think is the best way to go - use a live linux distro (live means it will boot from cd without needing to be installed on HD) such as Knoppix

Remove the SAM file (used to store passwords in windows) and reboot computer - no SAM file no password

make sure tho that you keep a copy of the SAM file if you really think there is some message there which you can then crack at your leasure...though if it is a strong password it may take a while...search on here for creating a password cracking cluster to help speed things up (if you have access to multiple pc's)

v_Ln

Dude. Didn't I just say that?

Maybe he was just reenforcing, dop?

Winston yes you did but with very little detail at all...like

Quote:

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Boot from a Linux CD

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now assuming the person ahs no experience with Linux or Live distros.....how they gonna know not to sit there and try and boot of a redhat 9 cd ;)

another example

Quote:

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copy the password file

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so which file is the password file?

I know you are gonna prolly come back with something along the lines of "Well you shouldn't spoon feed people let them google for it"

but you provided very little information to even give someone a starting point - i was just adding some extra information like what a live distro is, what the password file is called - where they can find info on cracking the SAM file

So Winston if youb dont want people repeating (partially) what you said before make sure you say it right first time round and then maybe they wont have to........

v_Ln

Thanks all for your help. I am pretty computer literate and if I have pretty clear instructions can follow them carefully, my brother taught me well. :-)

It is not so much that I think there is some hidden message in his password, it is just that (it is reallly hard to explain) I really want to know what it was, somehow I want to keep trying until I can just figure out the password.
Maybe it is something or some word that my brother used that will make me laugh one last time from him, or kind of tell me what meant something to him, but then part of me thinks *if* he wanted me to figure it out he would have made it easier, the little turd!

so maybe he didnt want me to get it, or maybe he wanted to amuse me in trying to figure it out - - -

then it could be that none of the above is true and he really didn't give it much thought. None of us expected this sudden turn of events. I would rather never get into his computer then to destroy the password. I know it isn't a tough password like some of you mention above, by that I am assuming you mean something with Capitol letters and lower case letters mixed with numbers etc.... not his way of working, he would not have done something like that. Heck most of his passwords were "password" LOL

He worked as a network tech and I could take it to his work, hook it up to the network and get in it that way, but they are being very callous about his situation, supposed to be good friends, and they dont bother to ask about him, also they want some information off of it and I am not sure I want that to happen. All they ever ask about is getting his PDA and his laptop. Selfish Rat Ba#$%%ds!


so I will give it a try to get the file somewhere I can work on it a my leisure and the clear the password like mentioned above several times. If I run into any problems I may be posting again, and thank you for your help.

Those of you that do pray (even seldom), please share one with us, this is a very difficult time, my heart is breaking, my brother and I and the whole family are very close and he is the most giving person in the world. He is the type of guy who would drop whatever he was doing to help someone out. I could always count on my brother and I always thought he would be there, losing him is incoceiveable and completely rocking my whole world. Thanks again everyone! I will stop rambling now.
Elizabeth

Unfortunately my brother passed away last week. I have viewed the video at thebroken.org, and am downloading Knoppix as I type. I just want to make sure I am downloading the correct software. I have Comcast Cable, which is supposed to be one of the fastest connections and this thing looks like it will take 24 hours to download - is there something wrong? It is 699 MB.

My brother always like me to be challenged and this is sure a challenge, I have this computer here, and the one at my parents house where he lived (his desktop) to tackle next. Along with the task of keeping my parents from fallijng apart and handling all of the funeral arrangements, I guess I am challenged. Am I downloading more thatn I need to or maybe from the wrong place? This one is from the purdue mirror site.

Thanks
Elizabeth

I often answer my own questions, but I just re-booted the machine (I rarely turn off my computer - maybe 1x a week) and disabled the network and tried a new mirror site and it is speeding right along now should have the entire thing in about 25 mins, downloading at 381 kb instead of the 8 it was downloading at from the purdue site.

Okay well I may be back, but wish me luck.
Elizabeth

Oh Yeah, I do have some software that my brother bought a while back - it is called EZ Recovery Pro by Ontrack. Would that help me instead. I remember him telling me about this software, but I think I remember it was for when someone erases their harddrive and for recovery like that.

Okay I downloaded the Knoppix Software, but I don't know how to make a bootable CD ROM, I have the file both zipped as originaaly downloaded and unzipped to a folder, can someone help me out here?

Elizabeth :confused:

is it an ISO or BIN file ?

boot using alternative OS, e.g., ntlmdos or knopix, remove the sam file, use lc5 or jhon the ripper or any other password cracker and try.

If you want how to mount ur hard drive let me know?

If you aren’t really able to hit the Password right now, but want to get at the music ASAP. Pull the HD and connect it to another computer as a slave, go in and retrieve the music from there. Your right, I don’t trust many people so, I'm not going to go into how to crack a password. But if you have the computer there with you then you will be able to connect it to another computer and pull what you need that way, (yes laptop HD can be slaved) you just need to go to the computer store and pick up a converter cable or see if you can find a USB drive (the small USB drive, not the big jalopy) and swap the drives out. Going to cost you a little, but if you say its for your brother then you will be willing to spend a little.

Ghost - I'm curious on this because I've never tried it, but won't slaving her hard drive in another system still deny her rights to the files by permissions? She'd most likely have to do the system rights trick on her own to even see the data there...

[edit] I dunno who redded her for her last post on downloading knoppix, but it's a legitimate question and for some odd reason I believe her story to be true. /me pulls out the mini-green cannon and fires, and hopes others will do the same for her. [/edit]

how about you just grab a copy of winternals ERD commander and change the password to what you want (this includes admin password and any user password)

also its a live distro, damn useful



but if u wanna get the password, try Cain.....

*sigh*

To answer the question (WHICH WAS Okay I downloaded the Knoppix Software, but I don't know how to make a bootable CD ROM, I have the file both zipped as originaaly downloaded and unzipped to a folder, can someone help me out here?)

Assuming you downloaded the correct file (should be an ISO file... if yours isn't, download the correct ISO, from here, for example), next step is to burn the ISO to a CD.

Fastest, cheapest, easiest and safest solution: download ISO Recorder from here. Install it, then right-click your downloaded Knoppix ISO and select "Copy image to CD" (this right-click feature is added by ISO Recorder). Make sure you have a writeable CD in your drive, and burn it. Then reboot your computer, make it boot from CD and there you go...

Thank you all for your help so far. I am going to attempt this again tomorrow. My brother had another account on the machine - and I guessed the password for that one, it was "123" ...didn't I tell you he didn't use tough passwords? That user has admin rights, so I am able to see everything, mostly - I still want to figure out what his password is though. Silly me tried to copy the sam file from the other user account - tsk tsk cannot do that when it is in use - for those of you that offered help, THANK YOU! My story is true, this is something I wish I was fabricating. I have not had much time to try to crack the password, keeping my parents from falling apart is a job in itself. Hope someone is there to catch me when I fall.

Thanks again, and if interested, take a look at http://www.adoptasaint.org/robert.htm - we have (with the help of an organization my brother belonged to) started a memorial computer scholarship fund and will award it yearly in his memory.

I am currently working on the website for that.

Thanks again, need some rest now, see ya all soon.

Elizabeth

I must have been tired, I forgot to send this last night. :o

Elizabeth ...

You remind me of a person called Kevin Mitnick. Its pretty true that you don't need to know much about computers to break into one, if you have a pretty good social engineering skill !!.
I really wonder why your late brother didn't tell you his laptop password when he was well ...


Cheers ... And best of Luck
PacketThirst