I have a windows 2000 machine on the network that we can no longer connect to via the network. I went to troubleshoot this computer and we found that we no longer know the admin password of this computer. We can log in locally under an account with user privileges only. All the rest of the logins are thru the domain (which it no longer can connect to). Otherwise we could just reset the pass via SMS or thru the domain.

I am trying to save the information that was stored in a domain users local settings and desktop. I know I can use one of the offline ntpasswd cracks to get into the machine as admin, but is there an easier way? I tried connecting the hard drive as a slave on a WinXP system, but upon trying to access the drive it simply sees it as an unformatted drive and suggests formatting it.


Your thoughts? I would like to save the admin crack as a final option. Would having the admin pass even get me access privileges to all of the folders for the domain user anyway?