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I've got a computer that's stuck on the main screen asking me for the administrator password.

I think that there is software that can help you recover or change passwords on an XP machine.

Does anyone know or can recommend one?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 7 '09 at 2:16

This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

3 Answers

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Try the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. You can burn it to a CD, boot from it, and change the password from there.

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This seems to work well enough. It's been a long time since I've done anything like this, so I downloaded the ISO image and ran it against a VM of XPsp3. I first tried resetting the Administrator password to something new, but that failed to work for some reason. However, for my second attempt, I chose the "clear password" option and that worked like a charm. Nice utility. – Geoff Fritz Dec 7 '09 at 2:42
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up vote 1 down vote

our partner HTG has a relevant article:

Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reset-your-forgotten-password-the-easy-way-using-the-ultimate-boot-cd-for-windows/

Same basic approach, burn a bootable CD that allows resetting the admin password.

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up vote 1 down vote

I recommend OphCrack.

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Which uses rainbow tables (as I remember.. whatever those are) to try to guess the password. – Nathaniel Dec 7 '09 at 20:43
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