Password Recovery

A friend was asking me if their was any way to recover a forgotten password for a FAT, FAT32 or NTFS system. I didn't know of any way that this could be done. I am new to PC troubleshooting (just passed my A+) and I am trying to build my own guide to troubleshooting. Can

anyone assist me with this if their is any way to do this. Thanks.........This is one great site....

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Comments

TheShadow

To be honest I am always leery of answering a question posed this way for several reasons.

1) If they are logging on to a system everyday why did they forget their password.

2) If they just received the system used then why did the seller not give them the password. It is kind of like buying a automobile without the key.

3) why does the user not know what file system it is?? FAT is only good for two gig and pen drives are bigger than that now. So is it Win95 since WIN98 and up use FAT32. If it is WIN95 or 98/ME for that matter just press escape and go. That is, unless you need networking and then just make up a new user name and password. Very insecure

4) For NTFS we need to know if it is a file system password or a logon password. If it is a file system password then you need the admin password to decrypt the files. If it is a logon password then caution is needed. First you need to know if the files are encrypted. If they are then you are in bad shape unless you have the elusive admin password.

If files are not encrypted then a Google search will deliver several Linux based bootable CD ISO's with password clearing routines. One should also find instructions for making a bootable windows PE CD with password clearing routines. Now if the user says you can't just clear the password and they must know the original phishing comes to mind! While there are other brute force ways of getting it from the hive by copying it to another machine someone need to give me a pretty good reason for wasting my time when it can be cleared in under 5 minutes.

Me thinks that you need more information on just what is up especially if it is a laptop.

JDMurray

There is a lot of information available through Google for recovering Windows login passwords and encrypted disk partition and file system passwords.

ally_uk

There are a few ways of doing this

Linux is your best freind

There are a few small bootable distros which give you ability to change your system password on NTFS partitions

I have had sucess using Austrumi I sucessfully changed my administrator password on a windows XP home edition pc

I did some further testing using XP professional and Austrumi wasn't effective

Bearing in mind you need to search for the older release of Austrumi as the password recovery tool has been removed in the newer versions

Other than this check out a few linux forums

there are plenty more distros which do a similar thing

TechJunky

I use an advanced software program that allows me to change any windows password weather it is on a Domain or workgroup. I dont wish to spam the name of the product over the net because if it fell into the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

PM me if you are interested and are willing to keep it quite.

KGhaleon

Asking for tools that can crack passwords on remote machines is suspicious, but if you just want to crack a password on your local computer then you can use software like Wininternals. I use it whenever I need to blow away any passwords on a windows machine. Just won't work on BIOS passwords, of course.

If you have physical access to a machine, then there's nothing stopping you from cracking it's password. There are probably a dozen third-party programs out there that do the same thing.

KG

boyles23

I use Winternals for passwords on home computers!