Win2k

[desire]

I was wondering if maybe someone would be kind enough to help me out here. My friend (who has agreed to let me setup a second box dual booting Linux/Win98 for his kids) has a daughter in college. Anyway her computer in her dorm is running Win2k and someone for a prank changed her login details. Does anyone out there know how to recover a password from Win2k? Mind you his wife suggested that I nuke the system and run Linux on it..which really is a great idea but the problem is that there are probably files she needs on it. Any help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated. Yes I understand this is a Linux forum and if someone could help out it would show them the reputation of "community" that Linux is known for. Thanks again

[zentu]

Go to www.thebroken.org and follow there steps in video 3.
You can also find the information at the screen savers (thescreensavers.com) as a Kevin Rose (same dude did both) dark tip.
But I really reccomend the broken if you want to see some cool stuff, then print out the Information from the Screen Savers.

NOTE: Incase you didn't know, XP and 2K are the same OS, with XP having many improvements. (but still windows)

[mcaycedo]

You have 2 options.

1. If you only want to recover the information in the local disks and them reformat and reinstall, you can use knoppix for this.

2. If you want to gain access to the machine, you can reset the password using some diskettes. There are some useful links:

Instructions
This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system, by modifying the crypted password in the registrys SAM file.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
image files
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bd030426.zip (1.4MB) - Bootdisk image, date 030426
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/sc030426.zip (~750KB) - SCSI-drivers (030426)
The unzipped image (bdxxxxxx.bin) is a block-to-block representation of the actual floppy, and the file cannot simply be copied to the floppy. Special tools must be used to write it block by block. For Dos, win95/98 & NT, use rawrite2.exe or some other imagewriter:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/rawrite2.zip - DOS Program to write floppy images.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/cd030426.zip (2MB) - Bootable CD image with same version and drivers as floppies above.

Previous versions (this uses the old NTFS driver, can try this if the new one won't work):
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bd011022.zip (1.4MB - Bootdisk image, date 011022)
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/sc011022.zip (~700KB) - SCSI-drivers (011022) (only use newest drivers with newest bootdisk, this one works with bd011022)

[desire]

Thank you very much for your help.
Actually just talked to my friend's wife and here's what she had to say.
1) "There's nothing fantastic about Windows XP, I don't feel particularly swept off my feet with it!"
2)" I think Lisa (her daughter) would be really interested in Linux provided you sat down with her and showed her how to work with it"
This is very cool, as I mentioned the family is getting me to setup their second computer to dual boot Linux/ Windows.
Once again thanks everyone for your help