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Windows 2000 Server Administration Password

S

Suture

Senior member
I work for a very small IT consulting company. I just started here. One of the servers (a Dell 2500 Poweredge) took a dump last night during a nasty thunderstorm. Here's the issue:

The administrator is on vacation in India for a while. He is the only one with the administrator password. The server runs Windows 2000 Server. It will not boot fully; it just boots to a BSOD with the usual boot disk error. Safe Mode, etc. from the F8 menu - none of it makes a difference.

I couldn't get it to load off the CD-ROM so I created the 4 installation floppy disks and was able to get to Windows setup from there. Of course, it cannot find the Windows installation for the automated recovery.

I am able to get to the Recovery Console, however obviously I can't do anything without the administrator's password. This server is rather crucial as it runs our website and houses some valuable network shares with our proposals, etc.

Any suggestions?
 
Quit. You work for an IT consulting company that doesn't have a backup of a mission critical server...

If that isn't an option: pull the drive and make a backup before you do anything else.
 
No backup of the server available? Sounds like it is pretty toasted, I doubt even having the admin password would help.

John
 
google Offline NT Password Editor

however, if it can't find the windows directory it can't change the password

and seriously, no backup?
 
the admin should've made himself available even if he was on vacation. you cannot go to vacation and ignore all calls when you work for IT. esp. when the infrastructure depends on you
 
Windows 2000 pro has never asked me for an Admin password when entering the recovery console...it would work for running CHKDSK /R ... see if you can find a boot disk, maybe.

All else fails, is it possible to attach the drive/array to a working machine - even an XP pro box is fine. Then you can use a functioning OS to check the disk for errors.
 
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