My sister reset her admin password on her Win2K box. Then she forgot it. She asked me to get into her machine. I did after trying a bunch of different thingBut s. (Note, her new password was between 22 and 30 characters long. Lophtcrack would take years to crack it)
Now onto my question: What tools should every computer geek have in their tool box? To get into my sisters machine I used a tool that overwrites the hashes on a Win2K box. (I won’t name the tool, if you want it email me)
I have some great tools, like a dos boot disk that will read NTFS so you can copy the SAM and other files onto a floppy so you can run a crack. But I imagine ther are other tools I will need in the future.
I tried going to knoppix.org but it apparently doesn’t exist anymore. (I got a ‘marsfind’ search page). Second, Redhat and other *nixes won’t help recover a Win Admin password. (Note, I have a NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris boxen) I also have all the install CD’s.
What I am looking for is utilities for data recovery and
breaking into Win boxes. Other utilities for different OS would be welcomed.
I have all the physical tools I’ll ever need. I need software tools.
I’m no pro geek, but I fix alot of boxes for my family.
Some of my most important tools are:
My computer toolkit (screwdrivers, tweezers, etc)
Partition Magic disks
An extra long cat-5 cable (so I can connect their machines to my cable modem w/o dismanteling my ofice, if they drop the machine off here)
Various sets of converters for PS/2, USB, serial, etc mice and keyboards cuz no one ever gives me the right stuff.
Copies of SpyBot and AdAware, because I don’t have time to download them on their stupid dialup. I udually get updates and burn to a disk before i work.
Copies of Win95, 98, 98SE, 2000 and XP (uh…for CAB files only)
If I feel like it, I arrive with a CD of all the updates available for an OS, because no one ever updates their damn OSes.
A copy of WinZip if they don’t have XP.
An FTP client if they don’t have one.
I’ve always liked SnadBoy’s Revelation for a handy password reveal app.
A copy of their MB manual if I can find it online.
Backup RAM that I know works.
All the extra HDs, Power Supplies, Video Cards, Audio Cards, etc that you can get your hands on that you know work. All this junk has come in quite handy for me in the past few years. Even extra cases.
As you can see by my list I’m a big fan of reinstalling the OS when there’s a problem. Because my family pisses me off
