How to obtain an administrator's password when you forget it. (XP)?

Question

I just changed my password on my main account and I forgot it the next day.
How can I get it back without restarting the whole computer?
Or atleast get acess to my files?
Pleeeeeease, help me.

I don't have a password hint.

Please help me.
I'm going f-ing crazy.

The files I want I can't acess from a different user. :/

Answer 1

All of the answers so far are pretty Good and should work. If you in a user that is a Adminatrator you can change the password if you don't have another adminstrator account you will have to use one of the other method I describe below...

Yes I would use the method used above first hit F8 at start up and restore the computer to a earlier time. This will reset the password to where it was I hope this is useful...

Goto the zip file on this page download it to a CD
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

I have used this in a Win 2000 and it worked great....

Petter Nordahl-Hagen has written a Windows NT/2000/XP offline password editor:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd

This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 system, by modifying the encrypted password in the registry's SAM file.

You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.

It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppy disk or CD. The boot-disk includes stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.

Works with syskey (no need to turn it off, but you can if you have lost the key)

Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!

Caution: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or later service packs on W2K, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again!

Download links:

cd060213.zip (~3MB) - Bootable CD image with newer drivers

bd050303.zip (~1.1MB) - Bootdisk image, date 050303.

sc050303.zip(~1.4MB) - SCSI-drivers (050303) (only use newest drivers with newest bootdisk, this one works with bd050303)

To write these images to a floppy disk you'll need RawWrite2 which is included in the Bootdisk image download. To create the CD you just need to use your favorite CD burning program and burn the .ISO file to CD.

Support and Problems? Don't call me! Talk to the creator of this great tool. He also has a good FAQ set up covering most of the day-to-day questions. Read it right HERE

Author claims that this tool was successfully tested on NT 3.51, NT 4, Windows 2000 (except datacenter), Windows XP (all versions) and Window Server 2003. Notice that it is NOT compatible with Active Directory.

Answer 2

You can by-pass your new password by opening another Administrator account! Start computer in "safe mode", go to "user accounts" in the control panel and open a new Administrator account with or without putting in another password. If security is not an issue leave it blank, or put a new one in!

Answer 3

When you install windows XP there is a account name with "Administrator", and the account you created after first boot is "Computer Administrator" Account with whatever you gave the name for the account. The "Administrator" account is not visible at normal welcome screen and only visible in safe mode. Now which account are you referring as Administrator account and what type of account do you have access to right now?

Answer 4

ok this is what you do restart the pc then as it is restartng up keep tapping the (F 8 ) KEY
fast then your come to menu your see at the top safemode , move upto that then hit enter then hit enter again , then your see a lot of tex on screen dont worry just wait it takes ia bit of time for the pc to go to the login screen when its there your see
administrator'

click on the administrator' , id then the pc will load up onto the desktop then your see a safemode box just click on ok
then click on start/ control panel
then click on user account , icon . now click on the user account with the lost password , then click on change password , then click on apply then shut down and restart the pc wait for it to go to the user account login screen then click on the user account with that you set the new password on then put in the password and login then creat a notepad and put your password in the then put that note pade on to a cd(r) disk the way you do that is put a cd(r) in the cd rewriter drive then right click on the file and click send to then send it to the drive where the cd (r) is then right click on the cd drive & click on explorer then at the top of the open window of the cd drive click on file /write theese files to cd then click on ok and it will burn the file on to cd and then you have your passwod saved to cd then remove the files notepad from the pc when you know you can access the cd(r) with your notepad on with your password in

Answer 5

If you have GoBack installed, choose to return to your computer settings on a day before you changed it.

If you have files you have updated since then and need not to lose, then you need to take copies of those files onto floppies or CD/DVD.

Answer 6

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=305