Windows Problems

[Timothy]

I have a problem with my Notebook that hopefully somebody here can help me fix. I cannot log onto Windows(2000) because I believe my password was changed on me. Not to mention I do not know/remember the passwords to my other Administrative accounts.

I called Technical service and support at Dell, and the only suggestions they gave me were to either reinstall windows, or to look into another way to access my computer. But since they couldnt tell me that i supposed they meant hacking into it, because they arent officially allowed to say how to do that.

Any help whatsoever on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Just to clarify it, I am the rightfull owner of this Notebook. And I will be happy to give any needed information about it in order to get into my harddrive.
Thank you for your time.

[skiddieleet]

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
Peace.

[Timothy]

Thanks buddy, youve been a great help

[Timothy]

Im using petter Nordahl-Hagen NT password utility to reset my administrative password.

I made boot CD - put it in drive - but Windows 2000 doesn't boot up with CD, it only boots up from hard drive. I did go into the BIOS and put the CD drive ahead of the hard drive in the boot order.

I used a utility program to extract files from the .iso file for making the boot CD. I just copied the extracted files to the CD - is there some special way to make a Windows 2000 boot CD?

Do you know what im doing wrong? Or why windows wont boot up from the CD?

[Oso]

Hey buddy, how could you forget your password???... anyway, PM me and I'll hook you up with an application to change the password easily...

I don't know about the application you are using, but I would make sure it is a bootable CD by trying on a different machine. If you changed the BIOS, maybe the CD is not bootable.

[skiddieleet]

What burning software are you using. There is a special way to burn it and I believe you just burned it as data, so it will not boot. If you're using nero, just go to file>burn as image, then select the .iso file and it will burn a bootable cd. I'm not sure with other burning software but you can try looking it up on google. Peace.

[Timothy]

The Program I was using was WinImage

[avdven]

Listen to h3r3tic. By extracting the files and burning them, this disc is not bootable. ISO files are exact images of CDs (including the boot information). If you want to make the disc bootable, learn how to burn the image to a CD.

Also, it may just be me, but this doesn't really sound too legit. It's one thing to forget one password. It's another to forget all of your passwords. Also, passwords don't just change. Someone has to change them. If it wasn't you (and the computer is, in fact, yours) then I'd reinstall the OS, only create the account(s) you specifically need and lock it down so no one else can access it (either locally or remotely). Still sounds fishy to me, though...

AJ

[er0k]

holy **** aj posted

edit >> i guess you have been posting recently again, havent seen you in a while.. wassup, hows the life going, etc?

[hypronix]

Originally posted here by Oso
Hey buddy, how could you forget your password???... anyway, PM me and I'll hook you up with an application to change the password easily...

I don't know about the application you are using, but I would make sure it is a bootable CD by trying on a different machine. If you changed the BIOS, maybe the CD is not bootable.

Sorry for being the skeptic here... but since this is a forum, I would expect most advice to be given out on the forum. Including links to useful apps, if somebody has this same problem they might need a link or two [you might not be around for example]. And if you're going to hook up Timothy with an app to do it for him - as in, mail the app over - I strongly recommend to Timothy to scan the sh*t out of it before running it. Otherwise a forgotten password will be one of the last things on his mind.

Anyway I don't know of any password recovery tools, the only thing I would come up with is use a LiveCD like Knoppix-STD [in particular for this case] and boot off it, get the passwd file and crack the hell out of it. But you've already been pointed out to easier methods so no point in doing it the hard way.

And yes, each program has a specific method in which .iso files are meant to be burnt. In all probability you might've even forgotten some hidden files too, let alone boot information and all that. So give it another shot, I'm sure your program has a method of doing it too.