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

From: Ghostrider (-00-_at_fitron.142)
Date: 09/07/04 

Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 16:19:37 -0700

Andrew Beary wrote:
> 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.....
>
>

This might work...

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

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