How many times has it happened to you that you just finished setting up a system, changed the password and BAM!  You can’t remember the password that you typed in.  You cannot access the system, and you don’t want to spend another 2 or 3 hours setting up Windows XP again.  Windows NT (2000/XP/2003) stores its user information, including encrypted versions of the passwords, in a file called ’sam’, usually found in winntsystem32config. This file is a part of the registry, in a binary format previously undocumented, and not easily accessible.

There is a utility to reset the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system.

• You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
• It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD.
• Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled user accounts!

NOTE THAT THE BOOTDISK CONTAINS CRYPTHOGRAPHIC CODE, and that it may be ILLEGAL to RE-EXPORT it from your country.

THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER. THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE (MIS)USE OF THIS SOFTWARE!

Download
CD Image – Bootable CD image – can also be burned onto a USB drive or key
Floppy Image – Bootable Floppy image

How to make the floppy

The unzipped image (bd080526.bin) cannot be copied to the floppy.  A special program must be used to copy the files block by block.

• Unzip the bd zip file to a folder of your choice.
• There should be 3 files: bd080526.bin (the floppy image) and rawrite2.exe (the image writing program), and install.bat which uses rawrite2 to write the .bin file to floppy.
• Insert a floppy in drive A            NOTE: It will lose all previous data!
• Double-click install.bat and follow the on-screen instructions.

How to make the CD

Unzip the file and there will be an ISO image file (cd060213iso). This can be burned to CD using whichever CD Burning program you like, Nero is my recommendation.
The CD will boot with most BIOSes, see your manual on how to set it to boot from CD.

The chntpw binary is (c) 2004 Petter N Hagen.  Please see COPYING.txt The distribution of the floppy image is restricted by this if it contains that binary.

INSTRUCTIONS

You can either view the video here or follow the instructions below.

Boot from the CD or floppy.
You will see the following screen begin to load;

You will then need to select the partition on your hard drive where Windows is installed.  In this example it is simple since there is only 1 partition.  Type the number of the partition – in this case  1  and hit Enter.

You will then be prompted for the PATH and registry files.  In most cases the default value is fine.  Just Hit Enter.

You will then be brought to a menu to reset the password.  The option is 1.  Type the number 1 and hit Enter.

The next step is to select the option to Edit User Data and Passwords.  Type the number 1 and hit Enter.  The local user accounts will be displayed on screen.

Type in the name of the local account for which you want to reset the password, then hit Enter.

Type in the new password for the account and hit Enter.
When you are prompted if you really want to change the password, type Y for yes and hit Enter.

At the next screen type ! (exclamation mark) and hit Enter to quit.

You will be prompted to write the files to the hard drive so that the changes will take effect.  Type Y for yes and hit Enter.

This will then take you back to the main menu.  Type q for quit and hit Enter.

Type n for No when you are prompted to run the program again and hit Enter.
Type    reboot   and hit Enter.  Your computer will now restart.

When Windows loads select the username for which you reset the password, and type in the new password.   You will then be able to fully access the system.

Tags | Disaster Recovery, Security, Windows XP