Lost Win Xp Password

[amanojyaku]

ok i am trying to del the SAM file from dos. I made a boot disk and restarted. when i try to access the c drive it says its invalid. but all of the other drives work. how do i enable the c: drive to del the SAM file?

 

[emericanchaos]

if your drive is NTFS then a bootdisk won't save you. DOS can't read NTFS.

 

[amanojyaku]

my file system is fat32

 

[redduc900]

Using a Win98 bootdisk, have you already tried the following commands from the command prompt?...

1. A:\> C: and ENTER
2. C:\> cd windows\repair and ENTER
3. C:\windows\repair> del SAM and ENTER

 

[amanojyaku]

ok i deleted the sam but now i cant login to windows. it goes to the login screen and says it has a security manager prob or something and says shut down and restart in safe mode and when i do that it still gives me the same message even in safe mode. it wont let me do it because the sam file is missing i think. what do i do, besides just do a new install of the os and loose all my information?

 

[anvil82]

What if you took a SAM file from another computer in which you knew the admin password, and overwrote the one of which you forgot?

Would that work?

(This is assuming you have another xp machine)

 

[repo man11]

I haven't had to deal with this, so I have no experience. With Redduc on the case, you should get it solved.

** Edited By Forum Moderator RED Hot Machine **

Links supplied could be used for other means, please do not post in future.

 

[redduc900]

Can you access "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" or the Recovery Console? I inadvertantly gave you the wrong information and I apologize for that...I don't know what I was thinking. The command from the prompt should have been...

A:\>copy c:\windows\repair\sam c:\windows\system32\config and ENTER

...when asked to overwrite, select Y. This overwrites the corrupted SAM in the system32\config directory with the good copy from the \repair directory.

 

[amanojyaku]

thanks