Recovering Admin Pass for XP Repair

trooper11

Senior member
Aug 12, 2004
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Well here is my problem, I recently had a power outage and it caused a failure with the XP installed on my hard drive.

I can still take the drive to another pc and view all the contents fine, all the folders and everything else is intact. the only problem is when i try to boot from it, i get an error that no operating system is present.

so what i decided to try first is run the recovery/repair system from my XP disc. well it picks up the windows isntall on the drive and lsits it as an option to boot into. the only problem is that it asks for an admin pass. It wont take the pass that I know I last used for admin access to the system. Ive treid about every pass I can think of that it might have been but no such luck. Is there anyway i can recover the admin pass or reset it so i can access it? i assume the admin pass is stored somewhere on the drive, perhaps i could access it on another pc just viewing its contents.


any ideas would be appreciated.
 

trooper11

Senior member
Aug 12, 2004
343
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well thats exactly what i was doing. it was going fine and picked up that a windows install was present, but then it prompts me for my admin password, which i either cant remember or has been changed somehow.

thats why i need a way of retrieving my admin pass, thats the only way it will let me proceed with the repair.
 

xgsound

Golden Member
Jan 22, 2002
1,374
8
81
You should back up your data first. If for no other reason, because it will insure a successful reinstall. (Corollary to Murphy's Law ... if you prepare for a problem, it will not happen)

That said, there is a program to reset xp passwords out there. I've seen it mentioned several times in this forum, but I don't recall it's name. The mentioned program does not extract the password, instead it allows you to reset it.

Edit: Here is a link to a thread . http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1602650&enterthread=y



Jim

 

trooper11

Senior member
Aug 12, 2004
343
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well i managed to reset my admin pass, but now im stuck at the recovery console.

i tried fixboot, but i get the error that it cant find the drive


then i ran fixmbr and it seemed to run fine, but then when i restarted, i got the same error message that no operating system could be found.


is there something else i should try?
 

JDCentral

Senior member
Jul 14, 2004
372
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0
You can get to the recovery console, right?

I would just do a 'repair' of XP... instead of entering the recovery console, just have it repair (I think it just goes through an backs up/re-installs stuff in the C:/windows directory).

THen try to boot.
 

trooper11

Senior member
Aug 12, 2004
343
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0


i am trying to run the repair setup by going through repair on the installation cd. it recognizes the xp install on the HD and goes through the first part of the repairs succesfully and goes to reboot

but it always reboots right back to the installation setup screen liek it forgot that the repair setup was going on

i try to run it agian and it does still list the windows install on the HD and now says the setup was only partially done and gives the option to redo, of course that then has to reboot and the cycle continues
 

Underclocked

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
2,041
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Are you removing the cd after the first repair boot? Maybe your machine automatically boots back to the cd. Take it out during the reboot and see what happens.
 

trooper11

Senior member
Aug 12, 2004
343
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0
i tried that and it just goes back to the HD and gives me the error that no operating system is present