Hmm.. How can you change your password in Win2k when you don't know the old one? :)

[Eli]

I don't know what happened. Somehow my password got changed, and I can't change it now because of that. What do I do? heh

 

[eyor]

Hmm, security in MS is a joke, but I am not familiar with win2000. Can you boot to dos(f8) and delete the .pwl file?

 

[Mark R]

Log on as a user with admin privilege.

In control panel, run 'users and passwords'.

Find the appropriate user name and select it. Click the 'set password' button towards the bottom of the dialog box.

In the new password dialog box, enter a new password, twice. Click OK.

Click OK to exit the program.

Your password has been changed.

If you have forgotten the administrator password, and cannot log on as administrator, then you need to reinstall.

 

[WoundedWallet]

Do you have a backup? You could copy it from there and have your old password back.

 

[LordSandMan]

This doesn't help your situation now, but you should always setup 2 accounts with admin priviledges. This isn't just incase you forget your password, but if there are too many failed login attempts the account may get disabled ( depending on configuration). This can also happen if the account expires.

The easy way to fix this is reinstall. Otherwise someone may know another way around the password protection. Like Eyor says, MS encryption and password protection sucks.

 

[Mark R]

Windows NT passwords are well protected. The login passwords are not stored on the HD, only a 'fingerprint' of the password is.

There are cracking programs around that, as long as you give them access to the 'fingerprint' file, will go through all possible passwords, until it finds one where the fingerprint matches.

The only catch is that Windows NT protects the fingerprints, so that you can't access them unless you have admin privileges.

 

[Rand]

Log in as a user with Admin rights and change the password for login in which you don't remember the password.