XP Hacker help?

[Flexmoney]

We have an IBM ThinkPad (Lenovo T60) that I guess you'd call "severance pay". My girlfriend's company went out of business over a weekend. This was more than a year ago. There was/is nobody to give it back to. I've been keeping an eye on it until somebody knocks on the door and asks for it.

I use it for websurfing, doing match scores (EZWinScore) and playing some online poker. We really don't have any files on it that we can't save elsewhere easily. (So, wiping the system is not a problem.)

Here is the deal. It has Network Administrator locks on it that I don't know the passwords for. And, it won't let me do certain things. I can't update any software (Win Media Player, Adobe, flashplayers, etc). Recently, somehow...I've lost the ability to view YouTube videos and such (I don't have the latest flash player, it tells me).

Is there a hard reset I can do to take me back to ground zero and lose the Administrative locks?

Can I bypass all of that with something like FireFox? (assuming it lets me load it...I'll try that now)

Different OS ?

[AustinMike]

I'd just wipe the drive and put a fresh install of the OS of your choice. I do that with every computer I get.

[JThompson]

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

[Adam B]

I have used this one with much success

http://www.prime-expert.com/ebcd/

Edited January 1, 2009 by boynty77

[sperman]

I'd just wipe the drive and put a fresh install of the OS of your choice. I do that with every computer I get.

That was going to be my recommendation.

[maineshootah]

I'd just wipe the drive and put a fresh install of the OS of your choice. I do that with every computer I get.

That was going to be my recommendation.

+1

Start clean, it will make it a heck of a lot easier to chase the gremlins in the system.

[ChuckS]

But, if you want to keep all that "free" software, a password crack is just the thing. I had to break into a laptop and I used a hack that I found on the web that takes advantage of the fact that the location of the administrator password is known. The hack did not try to break the encryption it just overwrote the password. The have was a small bootable Linux program that did the deed. Worked great.

Later,

Chuck

[Rob Boudrie]

I've used this free utility with great success: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

You burn a CD with the utility, boot from the CD and a command line utility running under Linux will come up. Follow the instructions and use it to reset the password to Administrator on your hard drive (yes, the NT utility reads the NTFS file system), remove the CD, reboot, and login as Administrator.

Or, you could track down the former sysadmin and waterboard him to get the password

[John Heiter]

Download and burn a copy of Helix. It's a very robust digital forensic package that just happens to be one heck of a password recovery tool. Boot your xp laptop from the Helix CD and you'll have the keys to the castle. Pretty much EVERY password ever entered into the machine past and present.

http://helix.e-fense.com/Download.php

[Flexmoney]

Download and burn a copy of Helix. It's a very robust digital forensic package that just happens to be one heck of a password recovery tool. Boot your xp laptop from the Helix CD and you'll have the keys to the castle. Pretty much EVERY password ever entered into the machine past and present.

http://helix.e-fense.com/Download.php

- Trying an ealier posted method...I created an iso disc that looked at the passwords and I had to manually copy a long data stream for each..then type them into a website for the "cracking"... Then pay $30 per...or wait 72 hrs. (I am waiting the 72hrs for the one I typed in)...

- I downloaded a version of Linux to see what it was like. It a version that boots at start-up from a cd (Knoppix). I don't know what that would get me but I thought I'd check it out. Maybe I was thinking it would run side-by-side with XP and lead me to looking into the window from Linux...so to speak. I don't know Linux...at all. I can't even get on the internet with it.

- I downloaded Helix2008R1 (which seems t be a version of Knoppix with cool tools). I don't know how to use it. While I found an app in there that gets me to the right spot, I can't seem to get/locate the "logs" that will allow it to proceed to run the app. Their pdf manual is 340 pages and out of date, it seems.

[Flexmoney]

I got there thru Rob's link. Worked rather well.

[Flexmoney]

Download and burn a copy of Helix. It's a very robust digital forensic package that just happens to be one heck of a password recovery tool. Boot your xp laptop from the Helix CD and you'll have the keys to the castle. Pretty much EVERY password ever entered into the machine past and present.

http://helix.e-fense.com/Download.php

BTW...Holy Cow !!!

If I knew how to use that stuff that is in there...I would be dangerous.