You are a network administrator in a small business environment where there's no domain controller or Active Directory in place -- and one of your users (or managing director!) comes running to you one morning asking you to ‘do something immediately' as he has forgotten his Windows XP administrator password and can't log on anymore!Your job and reputation are at stake - what would you do? One option is to simply refuse the request saying this is a no-way-out situation which can be solved only through re-installing Windows. But you are provided with an option of giving a positive answer through this guide.
Forgetting Windows XP administrator password can be a big nag especially if there's some important data held up in the system which is required on short notice. While there are no definitive guides on how to retrieve or re-set Windows XP administrator password, there are techniques and third party tools available that claim to put you back in control of your system. But before attempting a solution like this, make sure all other arenas are exhausted - perhaps there's another admin user, or try re-starting the system in Safe Mode and login without a password, i.e. the default admin of Windows XP. In the end, if all other measures fail, here's what you can count on: a Linux based free bootable CD that lets you recover from the loss of Windows XP admin password.
Download the bootable disk's image, an ISO file from here. Burn the image on a new CD and set the computer BIOS to boot with CD drive as first boot device. This is more than just a password resetting utility. Since it's a bootable disk, you land outside the installed OS and get complete offline working environment which is not dependent on Windows, and then NTFS and FAT32 file systems can be read as well.
Second, it offers to either change the password to a new one or removing it - for all the users, not just admin ones. Third, it allows unblocking of existing blocked accounts - so if there's a blocked admin already present, one can simply enable it. And lastly, it has got an ‘almost fully functional registry editor' too.
After booting from the CD, the instructions are provided on-screen and are self explanatory. Initially, the hard disk device drivers are to be loaded, once this is done, path of Windows installation folder has to be provided. This is how the programme gets the list of current users. A list of users along with their hex IDs is shown. Select the one that need to be changed, and select password resetting option. Use asterisk to specify a blank password. Press ‘yes' at confirmation prompt. Exit from the operations menu and select the option to write changes to the disk. Once this is done, remove the CD and re-boot the system and don't forget to change the password when back in Windows. Note that num-pad of keyboard might not work in some cases with this Linux CD.
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