Hacking into an XP admin account

[Mobojo]

Now before you all think im doing something bad, im not. I am trying to hack into a laptop here at work that got unbound from the network AD so the normal logins wont work and the only account on the laptop is the local admin account which who ever set up the password mistyped it or something along those lines. Since it is no longer bound to the AD I need to get into the admin account to rebind it. It is a laptop that I cant take apart or wipe. Its XP SP2 and I can boot from a CD. Also the password should be 22 characters so rainbow tables shouldn't work.

[Gimmie2]

hold del on startup to open bios (depending on MOBO) also try F11 or esc
I had a similar problem to this when a virus reset my account configs and privledges, i had to set the password on the admin account to "null"

[Mobojo]

I can change the XP admin password in the bios? It has a custom name and is the only admin priv. account on the computer.

[Gimmie2]

thats what i had to do, it resets the password to either default or null, but im not sure if the mobo in the dell will allow that....

[H0ly-H@nd-Gr3nade]

I have looked through various Google results, but most of them require an existing admin account.

Here is a method that involves a burning a Linux bootable CD, which actually seems to work well based on what I read. More details at the linked site.

[{CLR}geneSW]

Back-door admin? go into safe mode (without networking) and see if that account has been disabled. If not then you should be able to get right in.

[WalkinTarget]

Easy one !!! Ultimate Boot CD has an option to bypass the password at login, or even to change it (to blank, obviously). I forget the option from the menu, but its 100% obvious.

If you work on or repair, you NEED the Ultimate Boot CD.

I actually used this month ago to bypass a customer's login. He didn't tell me the login, so I cracked that password like a hard boiled egg and figured he could figure it out on his end.

[mapes]

Sounds like WT has the answer

[Mobojo]

Ill have to look into that. A little bit before leaving from work my boss was going to have my ghost the drive and see what I could do that was more invasive and not worry so much about the data. Well when we went to ghost the image over, found out there is a bad sector, so now Spindisk is going through and fixing things. I guess we will see Thur when I go into work.

[Mobojo]

Well one of the guys I work with hacked in while I was off yesterday. Turns out he ran the repair cd and when it was loading devices I believe, he pressed shift f10 and it opened a command prompt with admin privs so he made a new admin account and logged into that to change the other admin password. Nifty little trick if you ask me.

[K PhaNTOM]

Where can anyone get a Boot CD? It seems handy

[Gimmie2]

Well one of the guys I work with hacked in while I was off yesterday. Turns out he ran the repair cd and when it was loading devices I believe, he pressed shift f10 and it opened a command prompt with admin privs so he made a new admin account and logged into that to change the other admin password. Nifty little trick if you ask me.

what repair CD, like a XP boot disc or something like disc doctor?

[Mobojo]

Yea, an XP boot disk I believe. There should be an option to repair when you boot from it.

[Savage_Hobo]

Yaa... you can just boot up with your XP install CD and press R (when prompted) to get to the Recovery Console or a "Repair" option... but it's just a regular XP CD.

The only problem with the XP cd is if you're got a "non-windows" partition. The CD doesn't really like that and it won't boot up from the CD. You just get to stair at the Black Screen for EVER!!!!

[WalkinTarget]

If you work on or repair, you NEED the Ultimate Boot CD.

Quoted for emphasis. Next, I will BOLD and capitalize it !! You guys who have never seen a boot CD in action would (or should) be amazed. I was able to use one to boot a non-bootable drive, then map a drive to my server and copy the individual accounts from the wonky drive to the network share.

I then popped a new hard drive into the PC, booted and installed Windows, then copied the accounts back onto the PC from the network share.

When you can recover someones lost data, you are going to get good references on your work, and those people will well others, who in turn tell others, and the next thing you know you have a side job that pays for a lotta PC toys.