How to retrieve your Windows Vista password

How to retrieve your Windows Vista password

One of our most popular articles is a guide on how to reset your Windows Vista password using the password reset disk. However, if you did not create a password reset disk and you have forgotten your password, you cannot login and use your computer. In these situations there are certain tools that can help you out, most of them being commercial solutions, such as Active Password Changer. Still, there exist also some free alternatives, one of them being Ophcrack. In this guide I will show how to get Ophcrack and how to use it to crack and retrieve your Windows Vista password when you don't have any password reset disk at hand.

First, go to the Ophcrack site and download the Live CD (No Installation needed). Please make sure you download the Windows Vista Live CD and not the one for Windows XP. The Live CD is a disc image saved as an '.iso' file which you need to burn onto a CD. Use a good CD/DVD burning solution to write the image file on a blank CD. If you don't have any, you can try CDBurnerXP. It is free and it works very well.

Once the disc is ready, you need to boot directly from the CD you just created. If you don't know how to do this, please read this guide.

Once you manage to boot from the Ophcrack Live CD, you will have three choices on how to launch the tool. The first two options will launch Ophcrack in a graphic mode. If you have problems with the first mode, then reboot and choose the second. Depending on the hardware configuration, on some computers both modes will work. On the computers i have tested it, sometimes the first mode did not function properly but the second one always worked just fine.

If you don't want any graphics, then choose the third option which will launch Ophcrack in text mode.

Once you have chosen a mode, Ophcrack will start loading and retrieving your passwords. This can take a few minutes, depending on your configuration and how strong the current passwords are. Please be patient and wait until the screens with text like the one below disappear and the graphical user interface is displayed.

Once the tool loads, it will show a screen like the one below . Please be patient as not all graphical elements will be shown at once. This is because Ophcrack will be busy cracking the passwords for all users registered on the PC.

When finished, Ophcrack will show you all the registered users from your Windows Vista and their corresponding passwords in the NT Pwd column

Write down the password for the user that interests you, reboot your PC and login to Windows Vista using the password you just recovered

How to Access Data of a Password Protected User in Windows XP in Case the PC Fails to Boot

How to Access Data of a Password Protected User in Windows XP in Case the PC Fails to Boot

You may come across a situation in which your windows XP PC fails to reboot, and the most accepted solution to that problem is to re-format the Hard Disk. Before formatting, you should backup your files. If your computer is password protected, you won't be able to access them from outside, so here is a method for getting around this.

1. Boot the machine from Windows XP bootable CD.

2. At the setup screen, select R to repair using Recovery Console.

3. Now the console program will prompt you to select the Windows folder (eg. C:\WINDOWS) where the Windows is installed (you need to enter a number from the list of folders shown to you).

4. Type 'HELP' (without single quotes) and press enter for available commands. This is like a DOS program, but some features are not available.

5. Change the current directory to the user's directory where you want to backup.

6. Type 'CD "C:\Documents and Settings\X"' (without single quotes) and press enter. Where X is the username.

7. Now the current directory will change to "C:\Documents and Settings\X".

8. Now change the directory to Desktop by entering 'CD Desktop' (without single quotes) and press enter to go to the desktop folder.

9. Type 'DIR' (Without single quotes) and press enter, you will be listed all the available files in Desktop.

10. Type 'COPY a.doc D:\BACKUP' (without quotes) and press enter, where a.doc is a file available in Desktop and the folder D:\BACKUP available to copy the files.

11. As in step 7,8,9,10 you can backup other folders like "My Documents", "My Music", etc.

12. Note that you cannot use wildcards for COPY. I.e, you cannot copy all the files in a folder at once. You must copy one file by one.

TIPS

• Before doing this, try changing the password to blank so that you can access the data from another machine to easily drag and drop to copy your data.

• Any data not backed up will be permanently deleted when you re-format the hard drive, so make sure you back up any thing you want to keep.

• You will need Windows XP CD

How to Log on to Windows XP if You Forget Your Password

How to Log on to Windows XP if You Forget Your Password

Here is a simple way to access Windows XP with Administrator rights and privileges if you have password protected your User account on your Windows XP system and can't remember the password(s) to login. Whenever Windows XP is installed on a system, it creates a default account called "Administrator" and by default this account is not password protected. Therefore, if you bought a brand name computer (such as Dell, HP, Compaq or Sony)or you have installed Windows XP yourself. You should be able to login to the computer through the unprotected Administrator account.

1. Reboot your machine.

2. Press F8 before the Windows boot screen appears.

* Do not press F5 as used on the NT/9x series of Windows.

3. You will be prompted with a boot options menu.

4. Select the Start Windows in Safe Mode option.

5. Click through several self-explanatory screens until your reach the familiar 'Welcome' screen.

6. Note that this welcome screen is limited to 256 colors and 640x480 resolution because the primary graphics will have been set to the Windows Safe Mode software VGA adapter. You will not be able to change this mode even in Display options, while Windows is running in Safe Mode.

7. Find the icon for the Administrator user. If the default settings of your system haven't been changed, there should be no password for this account.

*The Safe Mode Welcome screen might display some of the other users on your system.

8. Login as the admin.

9. Press Yes at the prompt asking if you would like to continue using Safe Mode.

10. Continue on to the User Settings control panel. Here you can change any of the other passwords for user on the machine. Make any changes you want.

11. Reboot your computer. As long as you don't press any keys (i.e. F8) during the boot-up the computer will startup normally.

12. Login as the user for which you set the password.

TIPS

• You can access the Administrator account through the login prompt without logging into safe mode. If the computer utilizes the welcome screen instead of the standard NT domain login prompt, you can press Ctrl + Alt + Del twice to get to the login prompt. This is only true if you are running Windows XP Professional Edition. Windows XP Home Edition will also allow you to use this method to log on.

• Some users are smart enough to password protect their Administrator account when they install windows. If that's the case, you'll have to know that password in order for this method to work.

• There is a way to crack the windows "SAM" and system files to retrieve the original passwords Monitor, you need a program such as LC5 installed on a computer, and the SAM file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\config if LC5 is not installed on the computer that you forgot disk because as soon as you can get into the hard drive, windows is using the file so you cant copy it.

• Use SysInternals ERD Commander to change the admin. password. Boot from the CD and select the locksmith option to change whatever password you like. Alas, this product seems to have been discontinued, however there are many other options out there for resetting the password so long as you are willing to spend a little money.

• Much simpler is simply to rename or delete the SAM file (renaming is safer). For this you need to boot the box using some other operating system on a CD and then mount the drive (otherwise Windows locks the SAM file and won't let you touch it). NTFSDOS is also a good utility for this purpose. Find the SAM file and change the first character. After you reboot, all the accounts are still there, but they all have null passwords. Note: if you rename the SAM file on XP SP2, when you reboot, XP fails to initialize and forces you to reboot in safe mode. However when you boot into safe mode you get the same message, so don't try this method on XP SP2.

WARNING

• This method does not work with machines running XP SP2, you will need to use "safe mode with networking" instead.

• Use these instructions for ethical purposes only, please. Accessing Windows Administrator and changing passwords could be construed as illegal entry and electronic trespass in a court of law.

• This whole process is pointless if you know the administrator's password as you can easily remove passwords without going into safe mode. Assuming that your PC only has one user profile with administrative powers.