forgot one of my passwords for the admin of one of my machines.

[el]

okay I am stupid beyond belief. I had a primary domain controller so I would log into it and everything was fine but when I went to a workgroup I forgot the original password that I only used once since it was on a domain. now I got rid of the domain but I forgot the password and now after a reboot I can't log in! can I still get my data off the win2k main partion that is NTFS?

[turd]

depends how bad u need it, here is a link that is typical of what is out there, for 3rd party recovery, there is a lot. this costs about $70
http://www.mirider.com/ntaccess.html

which is why it is good to rename your admin account, and create an account named administrator and then disable it. disable boot floppy, psw your bios, etc, but those things are just distractors on a desktop pc and are eaasly circumvented

you could also brute force it, dump your hash, linux wrap it etc.

[el]

hash is that another big MS security hole that I keep hearing about. I was hoping to just throw it in another machine I have and read it like storage. I wonder if I boot in safe mode will I still need the administrator password. brute force maybe easy cuz I think it was around 6 with all letters.

[turd]

no its about the SAM and other stuff, none of it is that simple, but this is touchy stuff and not what this excellent forum is about. i would just decide how bad u want it, and maybe pay the $$, or make a project, or reformat and give your self a universal pass/backdoor, like first girlfriends name?

there might be an easy way, i just dont know of it, and i always learn stuff here, so good luck

[el]

okay cool thanks. I am going to try brute force first but I better not ask in this forum cuz I believe even this is kinda a gray area here. thanks again.