I only have limited account privileges on my computer

Factual Questions
1

On my laptop, I have 2 accounts. One is a limited account with no password, the other is full administrative power with a password. I haven’t used it for a while, and now I’ve forgotten the password. Now I can’t install programs, make new accounts, or other things like that. Is there any way to recover full functionality of my machine?

Thanks.
XP39C^2

2
      • I have not heard of any way to easily recover the existing password, but there are programs that will insert a new password into the admin account of WinXP. Usually I have heard of them being run from a live Linux distro CD, but I have never used such a thing so can’t say much beyond that.
        ~
3

This will let you reset the password.

4

Note, last time I used that particular hack it hosed up the os a bit. I actually ended up reinstalling Windows. I didn’t lose any data but it caused Windows to do some odd stuff, like lose all the desktop shotrcuts and file associations among other things. At the same time, the machine I used it on was my sisters and Windows very well could have been hosed before she forgot her password.

If you know how long your password and the character set you might want to look for L0phtcrack. L0phtcrack will run either a dictionary attack or brute force attack and can get short passwords pretty quickly. If the password is long, over 10 or 12 characters or uses alot of special characters (#$%^ and the like) use the password editor, as L0pht will take a long time. IIRC I tried to run it on a 23* character password with some specail characters and the estimated time to crack was a little over 2 years on a PIII. I believe that L0phtcrack has a trial edition of the software available.

Slee

*I think it was 23 characers. It was long, close to the Windows max for passwords.

5

In most computers I’ve seen, the “administrator” account is without a password. If you use the welcome screen to log on, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del twice. This will bring on the classic logon screen. Then type “administrator” without the quotation marks in the user name box and leave password blank. If you are lucky you will be logged in with full privileges, which allows you to reset the passwords in the other accounts.

6

Dog80, your post is frightening in the extreme!

7

Try booting the laptop into Safe Mode by holding down F8, then turning it on. Keep holding F8 until you get a menu asking what mode to boot into. Select Safe Mode. Many laptops have a hidden Administrator account set up at the factory; you will be able to see any such hidden accounts here. Select Administrator, then change your passwords from there. The hidden Administrator accounts often have no password, or one that you can find in the computer manual.