Change your Windows XP Password although you´ve forgotten it

I found an interesting article over at logicalexpressions that presents an astonishing solution if you have forgotten your Windows XP user account password. This is clearly a security hole because everyone is able to change the passwords, the only requirement would be to have the original windows xp cd at hand.

I don’t want to repeat the whole article, just the essence of it. Fire up your windows XP CD, boot from it, select Repair and let the repair process do its workings. Reboot when its finished and when you see the Installing Devices progress bar, press SHIFT + F10.

A console appears, enter nusrmgr.cpl and you have graphical access to your user accounts. You can change or remove passwords for all accounts and or type control userpasswords2 and login without being asked for a password. You will have to continue with the repair process though, it won’t work otherwise.

A pretty handy solution, the article also gives tips on creating a password rescue disk.

Another solution that may be viable in some situations is the following. If you have a second administrator account, you can simply sign in to that account to change all other user account passwords from with the Windows interface.

Administrators need to open User Accounts in the Control Panel. There on the Users tab they can reset the password of any local user account. Once the password has been reset enter a new password and confirmation password and click ok to set it. The user from that moment on has to use this password to log in.

Additional information about this procedure, and how to change a user password with limited rights, are available on this Microsoft documentation site for the Windows XP operating system.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Thursday November 17, 2005 -
Tags:change xp password, lost password, password, windows xp password, xp

Responses so far:

1. Martin says:

   November 17, 2005 at 5:23 pm

   from TheBluesBrother @ http://www.deny.de/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=15728

   Another way?

   You might try this to bypass the windows Admin/user passwords. It can come in handy if you have forgotten the Admin/user/power user password, or simply cannot get access into the system.
   It does not require any 3rd party software, simply a bootable floppy/cdrom. It involves renaming the WINDOWS user database file (SAM) effectively resetting all authentication.

   To get access into a locked out system, simply follow these steps. It will work on Windows NT/2000/XP including server editions, because of the way authentication is handled by windows.

   1> change the boot sequence of your system and set it to boot from the floppy/CD drive.

   2> insert the Bootable floppy or CD and power on your system.

   3> after the system boots from the drive and halts at a prompt, type the following

   cd c: (or wherever your windows partition is located)
   cd C:\WINNT\system32\config ( replace c:\WINNT with your windows folder)

   now rename the SAM file. The file has no extension so your command can be something like this :

   C:\WINNT\system32\config>ren sam sam.bak

   Now the next time when you boot, all your passwords will be reset to blank, as windows rebuilds the user database and the SAM file. Possibly all the users you have defined and any domain affiliations may be lost as well.

   So use this at your own risk and preferably on standalone machines which you want to gain access to.

   Reply