Batboard

Ok, I was trying to set my XP up for remote desktop on my mac. Now I clicked workgroup instead of the domain I was on, thinking it might work, however I have no idea to what any of the passwords in the computer are, so I cant log in, is there any way to bypass login, or am I screwed to have to reinstall XP?

There are some password reset/bypass suggestions in this thread which should help you:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=63378

Todd

Yea I read that, but RESCUE161 can log in as a regular user, I have no way to get on past the point where it asks for user name and password.
Othewise I would have downloaded one of those password recovery things.

Thanks

They are not password recovery. What some of those utilities will do is reset the administrator password for you so you can log in as an admin and change the other passwords.

emsbuff3240 wrote:Yea I read that, but RESCUE161 can log in as a regular user, I have no way to get on past the point where it asks for user name and password.
Othewise I would have downloaded one of those password recovery things.

Thanks

Yeah, what Jaymz said above. The fact he could log-in as a regular user has nothing to do with using the password reset boot floppy to blank the admin password.

Todd

Do this. While the computer is booting up, try to make it go into Safe Mode. F8 worked on mine. Once the password screen comes up, Type in "Administrator" for the user name and leave the password field blank.

If when you bought the computer and you were setting up the accounts, if you skipped over the admin setup, then password should still be "blank".

If you're using Windows XP Home edition, then the admin account cannot be access unless you are in Safe Mode. Found that out the hard way.

Once you get in, I would recommend changing it from "Home" to "Professional" using a tweak tool. I do not like the home version of anything really - just a pet peave of mine.

I have XP pro, i hate home edition too.

ya haha i set the computer admin password as something really complicated, and forgot it, not using it at all because I was on a domain, but then I switched it to macs so i took it off the domain not thinking that I would have to remember the password.

im looking at the boot disk pasword editor now, that should work.

Thanks for all your help.

For those who are presented with the "new" XP way of logging on by clicking on a user icon, if you want to log in as administrator (on Professional), press CTRL-ALT-DEL twice and you are brought to the NT style login screen where you can type the user and password.

The password blanking program works great. You can blank the password of any local accounts on the PC.

There was a program that someone posted that I used to tell me what the passwords were. It worked in seconds and was free (for 60 days then the price goes to $300.00 if I want to keep using it). It listed every single password that was in the PC.

It was a one-time shot for me though. Maybe one day if I ever am in charge of a large network or something... <------------NEVER gonna happen.