xp-home password ??

[TuMbRaS]

Of course...the worst case scenario has unfolded..lol... my boss at work has just informed me that he has forgotten his password to log onto his pc (WIN XP Home). He has the traditional login screen with the pretty little icons.. not the CTRL+ALT+DEL. the first thing i asked him: did you make the password reset disk??? -NOPE!!... im like..omg. 2nd ?- did you keep an administrative account to logon locally to your machine?-- NOPE!... im dying here!!!

I then asked if he tried the password hint thing near the login icon.... unbelievably...he cant even remember his hint... which was a 2 digit yr and 2 digit month..

so, for the more technically savvy people...is there any hope at all?? or am i the bearer of bad news??? -hint - im already trying on the grim reaper outfit and sharpening the scythe..lol

anyway..any remedies...let me know!!!

~n

 

[Qumahlin]

try going to the login screen hitting ctrl-alt-delete twice to bring up the w2k style login...then type in administrator and no password and see if it will let you on.

 

[TuMbRaS]

Since yesterday, we have tried that..but it didnt work..i tried various combinations with Administrator, Admin, etc..none of them worked...

im thinking he's basically screwed..unless there was a way to hack into it..

anyway...thank you for the suggestion... i appreciate it.

~n

 

[Lonman]

Here you go:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q318033

This assumes he hasn't set a password on the [safe mode only for XP Home] adminstrator account, and forgotten it too. If so, print out the second paragraph of the article and give it to him.

If this isn't a solution and he has valuable data he can't afford to lose, pull the hard drive and slave it in another system to retrieve it. As long as he didn't encrypt them you should be able to access them ok. If it's an ntfs volume be sure plug the drive into another XP or Win2k machine so it can read it. If he's set up any security features on any of the folders/files you shouldn't have a problem either taking ownership of them or backing them up and then restoring them in an alternate location w/o the security features - as long as they're NOT encrypted. Good luck.