Will a Win2K reinstall recover from lost password??

From: Andrew Beary (andrewbeary_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 09/07/04 

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 18:54:18 -0400

I think I gave some bad advice to a friend who was moving his old Win2K
laptop from a domain environment to a workgroup (in order to utilize a
shared printer.) After walking him through the steps of changing computer
identification and joining the default Workgroup, the machine was ready to
reboot. Only after the reboot did either of us realize that we didn't have
a password for the local Administrator account. His former logon name and
password (which did have Admin rights) doesn't work anymore, and multiple
guesses for what the original Admin or user passwords may have been didn't
work. I tried running Recovery Console from the Win2K install CD, but that
only works if you know the local Admin password. Of course, Guest is
disabled too - the firm he used to work for when it was set up did a good
job of theft-proofing their laptops (I guess they let him keep it when he
lost his job.)
So now I'm wondering if it's possible to run Win2K setup again without doing
a clean install. Will that allow a newly created Administrator account to
get back into his old application data (Access database, Outlook contacts
and calendar, Excel files)?? I know there's a whole lot of older junk he
doesn't need, but he has been using the Access and Outlook apps in a
standalone mode since he left the firm where he was a domain member. After
screwing him up by locking him out of his laptop instead of hooking him up
to a printer, I am hoping that there's a relatively painless way to create a
new account and get to the files. Maybe somebody knows of a utility program
out there that can create a Password Reset disk after the fact (or maybe I'm
just dreaming).....
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.....

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Will a Win2K reinstall recover from lost password??
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