ever got locked out of a window system?

[UncasMS]

this is what happened to me today and because the incident wrecked my nerves considerably i thought i should share the solution with you:

- was asked to help transfer a friends photos from his latest holiday from his notebook to his desktop machine

- took a network cable + switch with me in order to connect notebook and desktop

- had to change something in the desktop's network settings

- reboot

==>> so far so good

or so i thought as this was far from unusual



next, however, came something i didnt really consider strange or abnormal either but it actually made me pull my hair for almost an hour

====>>> i was faced with an ADMIN login

at first i didnt really think about it, called my friend, who was on the phone, and told him to log in

when i saw the expression on his face i knew something was wrong here:
he told me he never saw this admin login (for xp) before!



oooppssss

first i thought he was kidding and told him i needed the password but he didnt know any such thing

dont ask what made the pc ask a password at all - we both didnt know but i was the one to set it straight again

because the admin account was the only account being shown we had no chance to login to xp

i tried a couple of things but actually i had absolutely no idea of how to overcome this password protection

being close to taking the pc to my place, securing the data and installing windows from scratch i remembered one of those dvds i usually take with me when dealing with any of my friends pcs

i had ERD COMMANDER on one of the dvds and this tool or one of its components actually saved my a**e

erd commander let's you boot into a graphical interface similar to what xp looks like but is completely independend to the os

inside erd commander i found a tool by the name of LOCKSMITH and guess what... locksmith let's you override any existing password for any account!

i didnt believe the desription at first but said to myself i got nothing to loose and so i gave it a try

after the reboot admin account showed up and the NEW password which i set via locksmith let me enter xp again


folks, you dont belive how surprised i was finding a tool within my collection which i had never known or used before but which easily let me override the old password

on the one hand i was extremely happy to be able to login to xp again a to the job which i originally came to my friends house


but on the other hand this clearly shows that a password protection for an account is useless....
.....unless you protect your bios from being entered as well

because i had to enter the bios in order to switch the boot sequence to start from my dvd instead of hdd

so far i have not set a password for my bios but i will do so real soon in order not to find any of my machines entered as easily as i did it with my friends machine today



so in case anyone ever has pw problems: have erd commander on a bootable cd/dvd at hand and use LOCKSMITH

[Zero G]

Damn good that you figured a way to do that, but like you say, so much for a locked password. Thanks for sharing that with us.

[photo_angel2004]

i had ERD COMMANDER on one of the dvds and this tool or one of its components actually saved my a**e

erd commander let's you boot into a graphical interface similar to what xp looks like but is completely independend to the os

inside erd commander i found a tool by the name of LOCKSMITH and guess what... locksmith let's you override any existing password for any account!

i didnt believe the desription at first but said to myself i got nothing to loose and so i gave it a try

after the reboot admin account showed up and the NEW password which i set via locksmith let me enter xp again






so in case anyone ever has pw problems: have erd commander on a bootable cd/dvd at hand and use LOCKSMITH

Where do you get erd commander? Is it in the operating system itself?

[UncasMS]

it is a product from WINTERNALS (just like locksmith)

c.f. the LOCKSMITH-link in my initial posting

[jamoskeag3]

PA
You have to purchase it. See Uncas link above; "LOCKSMITH".
And it aint cheap.

[photo_angel2004]

Holy crap its $500.00

[drfsupercenter]

There is no trial?

[photo_angel2004]

7 days

[soup]

Well I bookmarked this thread & thanks for the heads up.

[photo_angel2004]

me too I guess it would be a one time use.

[jamoskeag3]

Not sure, but I think $500 USD buys you a 7 day temporary license, NOT a 7 day free trial. We all better read the fine print if ever actually get to the point of purchasing.
A full license is over $1000 USD.

[photo_angel2004]

WOW I guess I read that wrong.


Heck for 1,000 I would just a new pc LOL

[UncasMS]

first of all it was not my intention to tell you you'd have to buy a $500-1000 software for just this purpose

in case you're an IT pro time is money and setting up machines with full server software/licences/updates may take hours and creating backups of user data isnt even part of this time frame but that's another story

after all locksmith was part of erd commander quite some time ago but now erd commander itself became part of the admin's pak which the 500-1000$ refer to

you may find an older version of erd commander 2003 somewhere on ebay and it'll do the job just fine - no need to spend $1000


but what my second intention was comes a little short in the recent discussion on the admin's pak price:

secure your bios or otherwise somebody may load a cd/dvd with a tool like erd commander and the password protection of your system is a child's play

[Chewy]

Hey guys and gals,
This is an old trick, they broke xp's password long ago, a couple of years ago
a friend brought me a laptop to fix from out of town, we never could get him to answer his phone and give us his login password, I googled a linux startup
disk and password changer(free), fixed computer and passed message on about new password, my first name!

[photo_angel2004]

All nice info to know thanks guys.