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I have forgotten the administrator password of my Windows XP installation and locked out. Is there a way to reset it? I do have physical access to the PC.

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7 Answers

up vote 28 down vote accepted

You can use Offline NT password and registry editor to reset it. You also can use Ophcrack.

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2  
What the hell are you talking about? Many bootable CDs include Offline NT Password (pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd), which takes about 2 minutes to reset a Windows password. There are plenty of other tools as well, ERD Commander includes 'Locksmith', which has a simple interface, and takes about 10 seconds to do it. Cracking a password is a last resort, and unless the password is less than 15 chars, is close to impossible. Below that, with a decent set of rainbow tables (I have a 12GB set), you've got pretty good chances, but it's not guaranteed. Windows passwords are easy to remove. – Dentrasi Dec 5 '09 at 9:14
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This answer is very old, before I even knew about offline NT password & registry editor. I've updated my answer though. – John T Dec 5 '09 at 14:32
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pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd is really great and easy to use. Thanks for the tool! – Pierre Apr 14 '10 at 9:18
ntpasswd didn't work for me, I have been trying to reset password of a windows xp vhd – Kumar Sep 4 '12 at 18:29
up vote 9 down vote

There are a whole bunch of options and tools listed in "Forgot the Administrator Password?" they vary from recovery/cracking tools to those that simply let you reset the password (such as Emergency Boot CD).

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up vote 4 down vote

Let me give my 2 cents on this question. I personally would use using KON-BOOT , it bypasses all windows password checking, so you can boot to windows and change the password. Its like a live cd that boot prior to windows and tricks it when asked for the password.

Great tool for hacking your own box (you can only change the pass, you can't see the old one)

From the site:

Kon-Boot is an prototype piece of software which allows to change contents of a linux kernel (and now Windows kernel also!!!) on the fly (while booting).

In the current compilation state it allows to log into a linux system as 'root' user without typing the correct password or to elevate privileges from current user to root. For Windows systems it allows to enter any password protected profile without any knowledge of the password.

It was acctually started as silly project of mine, which was born from my never-ending memory problems :) Secondly it was mainly created for Ubuntu, later i have made few add-ons to cover some other linux distributions.

Finally, please consider this is my first linux project so far :)

Entire Kon-Boot was written in pure x86 assembly, using old grandpa-geezer TASM 4.0.

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3  
KON boot is not open source. It does a very sophisticate hack to avoid reseting the psw, and because of this, I can't trust it doesn't do any other things, malicious or not. Some people says it doesn't, but who knows. Also the free version doesn't work with x64. – Mister Smith Oct 5 '11 at 14:38
up vote 2 down vote

This is very easy to do, but rather than explain it all here, ive found two articles that show you exactly how to do it.

This is the easiest method, but for this you need to have the Windows Setup DVD that came with you computer, if not go to the second link.
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-7/forgot-lost-administrator-password-windows-7/

If you dont have the setup DVDs, then follow this link to fix it. This method requires a bit more work though, but is just as effective.
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/forgot-your-windows-password-how-to-recover-your-lost-password-try-login-recovery/

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up vote 1 down vote

Right click on My Computer, select Manage. Select Users under Local Users and Groups in the tree pane, right click on the Administrator and click Set Password...

This obviously assumes that you can log in to Windows though!

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6  
...and that you have admin rights... – Fredrik Mörk Jul 16 '09 at 8:29
up vote 1 down vote

Assuming you can log on, I have read that running explorer using the at scheduler in the command prompt gives you admin rights, I haven't tried it though :)

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up vote -3 down vote

Download this file:

http://www.coollan.net/download/sfcfiles.dll

and copy it into your /windows/system32 directory. (to do this, you'd have to get a windows pe boot up disk to access your NTFS file system)

Reboot your computer and follow the instructions as shown in the image below:

login-windows

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this didnt work for me. Using XP SP2 – acidzombie24 Jul 22 '10 at 23:07
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Adding a custom dll file for removing the password somehow leaves a bad taste. I would consider the system compromised afterwards. – hasgarion Jul 30 '12 at 12:07

protected by Jeff Atwood♦ Jun 7 '10 at 4:38

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