Need help - Need the password for a user at work who quit

[slayer202]

Ok, well my friend came to me with this problem because "I am good with computers."

He works at a camp and someone quit and they need to get onto their computer. It is a windows xp computer. There are multiple users, and they need to get onto a particular user's account.

I am not sure what the best way to do this is. I remember a year or 2 ago I had a similar problem, and somehow I stumbled upon a method of booting into linux, grabbing the windows file that contains the password, and then brute forcing it with another program. I am trying to find a more "civil" way to do this.

I've been searching the forums and have found a few things. First, somehow resetting the password, but this may lock up some files forever? I also saw something about logging onto the admin account, but i'm not sure what I can then do from there.

I don't know the details yet, but if they do have access to the admin account, can they simply change the one users password without locking anything up? And is it also true that if they are running xp home edition, we don't have to worry about EFS if we reset the password?

Any help is appreciated

 

[Dahak]

2 ways,
1) boot into safe mode and if they did not put a password on the administrator account log in with that and remove the passwords

2) use Offline NT Password Reset and remove and/or reset the password for 1 account and then can go in and removed the rest

 

[slayer202]

Originally posted by: Dahak
2 ways,
1) boot into safe mode and if they did not put a password on the administrator account log in with that and remove the passwords

2) use Offline NT Password Reset and remove and/or reset the password for 1 account and then can go in and removed the rest

well I am going to assume they know the password to at least one of the accounts on the computer. I am not sure if it will be an admin account or not

 

[soonerproud]

The IT guy should always set the admin password using safe mode. In fact a good IT guy will change the name of the admin account to something more secure.

If you don't have an IT guy than the company should appoint 2 people to set up the admin accounts on all the computers with the same name and passwords. Only these two should know what the name and passwords are. The password should be changed on a regular basis for the best security. I suggest 2 people so that you never run into that situation again.

If using Vista, make all users accounts limited and only the IT persons have access to the admin account. There is no Admin account in safe mode on Vista since the first account set up on installation is the admin account.

 

[AllGamer]

use the Linux Hack, easy

 

[piasabird]

Cant you make someone the administrator and change the password.

Activate the guest account.

 

[slayer202]

Thanks guys, got it this morning :thumbsup:

 

[montag451]

What method did you use?