Win 2k Admin passwords

[mstrickland]

I believe you already need to be the administrator for pwdump to work; however a privelage escalation tool like PipeUpAdmin ( http://www.dogmile.com/files/#PipeUp )might help. I think this was patched with SP2, so if you have an earlier installation than that I think it'll work. It basically adds the current user to the administrators group which will then allow you to make whatever changes you need to make; or at the very least will get pwdump working. Hope this helps.

[El Diablo]

is this on a NTFS partition, or is it FAT?

also, is Active Directory being used, or is this just a standalone server?


I'll try to help however I can.



El Diablo

[sandsword2]

Use a program Like brutus or webcracker to bruteforce the account. If you need these, email me at sandsword2@excite.com and I will send them to you. Since you are the companys top dog, you of course wont get in trouble for useing these programs. You should start them up and leave your computer running all night. By morning it should probably be cracked. I have other programs that might work so give me and email and I'll see what I can do. By the way, what is the servers address? I might be able to crack it for you, or at least be able to help you better.

[Yohev]

Hello everyone

I've tried that Pipeup software, but it keeps teling me there is a system error 5 occurring, so it won't work.
I think the file system is FAT, but that is an assumption as I can't actually access the details, and it's really starting to annoy me now!!
The main computer is not on the internet, so it doesn't have an address, and anyway, I get the feeling that it is server in name only, because the guy who set it up (the disappearing legend) wasn't as smart as he thought he was, and I think the only reason he set himself up as administrator was because he could, and that he would be begged to return to sort everything out.

Now you guys know what I'm up against, the guy is a selfish egocentrical prat who goes missing for what can be months on end. He leaves something like this behind him, so he gets begged to return and sort it, and when he does, it is some time before anyone realises that he conned his way back to work. This time, everyone, including our boss, is backing me to sort it before he returns, so it won't happen again.

I can run any software I like on the system, there are no laws governing it, basically, as I said we are an incredibly small project, and everyone wants me to do anything I can to fix it, and they're letting me just get on with it. Everyone trusts me anyway.

I feel so guilty that nothing has worked so far, but you guys have been the God send I was praying for, at least you have given me hope that I can fix it!!

[rcgreen]

People don't just "disappear".

[sandsword2]

If its online and you can run programs on it then a brute force is probably an extra good bet. If the information on it is not too important, then you could low level format the thing and start over. You might try checking the registry for some helpful info.

[@lm!ghty]

Have you tried this?
In Win2K you can also do a "Run As" after you've logged on to your laptop? Since you're saying he's not as astute as he'd like to think i'm quite sure he may have left that avenue open.

Another option may be to contact the other administrator get his password and access the files you need to and then change his password to secure your system (after you've added yourself to the admin group of course!)

However as mentioned earlier your best bet sounds like cracking the password to his account. If your disk is formatted in NTFS it'll take some time and tenacity but can be done. Do this, go into Windows Explorer and right click on your hard drive and select properties. It will tell you how your hard drive is formatted. Also, what office program are you using? Office 2K? Do you have all service packs updated?

The best of luck to you and please by all means once you're successful let us know. I may run in to that same problem down the road!

[LoggOff]

right, i remember reading something about the office series about, let me see if i remember this right cause i dont have it installed anymore, but you open up access goto the help, about. then theres like a button in there that is something like information about your computer. this opens up another program and in that theres a run button. i think that this was a way to get trogans running and not get noticed by virus scanners, and its probably fixed by now. but i think that method works in a way that it wont check your privelages so if you can acces the control panel and change admins password you should be all good. also if this guy actualy loged in using Administrator as "his" account he was a moron and didnt really know why its hidden (well in XP pro, i havent actualy used 2000)
good luck from me to, if i think of anything else ill post it

[casper3699]

Originally posted by Yohev

The main computer is not on the internet, so it doesn't have an address, and anyway, I get the feeling that it is server in name only, because the guy who set it up (the disappearing legend) wasn't as smart as he thought he was, and I think the only reason he set himself up as administrator was because he could, and that he would be begged to return to sort everything out.

If your computer is on the network then it will have an IP address. It might not have an internet IP but it will have a local. If you now the scope of address run a port scan on the range of IP's and see which one it is.

Originally posted by @lm!ghty
[B]Have you tried this?
In Win2K you can also do a "Run As" after you've logged on to your laptop? Since you're saying he's not as astute as he'd like to think i'm quite sure he may have left that avenue open. [B]

When you execute "Run As" where do you do that from? Don't you need admin pass to do that?

When you get the laptop log the laptop as admin and run LC3 from there to the server.

[@lm!ghty]

"When you execute "Run As" where do you do that from? Don't you need admin pass to do that?"

-- you can do "Run As" from a normal user account after you've logged in and once you're into windows explorer just right click the file/folder you want and select run as.

-- true, you do need the admin password but if there's someone else from the admin group then they could use theirs. I believe they stated that earlier.