OK so you “forgot” your password? Right haven’t heard that before. But never the less it’s a question that is asked over and over. So whether you legitimately forgot your password, bought a pc that was on display and noone knows the password, or you just have an older brother that won’t let you on his computer, this is a step by step tutorial on how to do it all.
Windows users, let’s start at Option1 (Mac and Linux users let’s go to Option3)
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Option1: Display the password
Website: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php
Using Ophcrack to display the passwords for all the accounts on the computer.
Windows 7 Users currently it looks like this won’t work for you. But there are separate downloads for Vista and XP users.
First off we download the CD image for the Operating System we are using. In this case i’ll be using XP.
Once you download the .iso you can burn it to a cd. (Not sure how? see our tutorial here–> http://lucas719.info/function/iso-files-create-burn-mount)
OK so now we boot up off that cd and we see this screen
You have a few seconds to change options if you want but the default has always worked for me.
It will continue loading with screens like this
Finally it comes up and everything starts automatically.
As it progresses you will see the passwords cracked and shown on the far right under the NT Pwd column. Write the passwords down and then reboot the pc and login with those passwords 
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Option2: Remove that password
Website: http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is a very fast password “recovery” program. I quote recovery because the program doesn’t actually recover the password – it deletes it.
When the website loads as shown above, scroll down to the Download section and click the link next to Bootable CD image – in the example above, that would be the cd100627.zip file.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is completely text based which can be a little intimidating. However, anyone should be able to complete the password reset process using this tool as long as you can follow along with these instructions.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor should begin downloading automatically. The download is in the form of a single ISO file contained in a single ZIP file.
Important: There are not separate versions of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor for different Windows operating systems. This single program is capable of removing the password from any user account in Windows 2000 or newer Microsoft operating systems. This includes Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.
Once downloaded, extract the ISO file from the ZIP file. Feel free to do this using the integrated tool in Windows or a dedicated program like 7zip.
After burning the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor ISO file to a CD, go to the computer that you’re trying to gain access to and let’s boot that computer off that cd.
After the initial startup of your computer is complete, as shown in the previous step, the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor menu shown above should display on screen.
Press ENTER at the boot: prompt, shown above.
The next thing you’ll see is several lines of text that quickly run down the screen. You don’t need to do anything here.
The next step in the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor process is to select the partition that contains the Windows installation that you want to delete a password from.
Many computers have a single operating system installed on a single partition on a single hard drive, making this a very easy choice.
If that’s the case for you, just press ENTER to accept the default partition.
Otherwise, type the number corresponding to the correct partition from the Candidate Windows partitions found list and then press ENTER.
Tip: If more than one partition is listed and you’re not sure which one to pick, chances are the larger partition is the one with Windows installed.
Windows 7 Note: Every Windows 7 PC will have more than one partition listed. In nearly all cases, the right partition to choose will be number 2.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor now needs to know the exact location of the Windows Registry. Except in the rarest of occasions, the default location will be the correct one.
Press ENTER to accept the default Windows Registry path.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is now asking which part of the registry it should load.
Press ENTER to accept the default choice of Password reset.
Note: The Offline NT Password & Registry Editor tool can perform various functions aside from resetting passwords but since that’s the focus of this particular walkthrough, that’s all we’ll discuss.
Now that the registry is loaded and available to the program, Offline NT Password & Registry Editor needs to know exactly what you want to do.
Press ENTER to accept the default choice of Edit user data and passwords.
This will load the necessary options for the actual password reset.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor now needs to know which user’s password you’d like to delete (erase, clear, blank, remove, call it what you like).
A default user is listed between the brackets at the prompt. In the above example, you can see that it’s the Administrator user.
If the default user is the user you’d like to remove the password from, simply press ENTER. Otherwise, enter the username (I entered Tim) and then press ENTER.
At the bottom of the screen you’ll see the User Edit Menu with several options to choose from.
Type 1 for Clear (blank) user password and then press ENTER.
Note: Offline NT Password & Registry Editor shows some interesting information about the username you entered in the last step – the full name, what groups the user belongs to,
how many failed login attempts have taken place, how many total logins have been completed, and more.
Important: If you see a check in the Passwd not req. box, this means that a password is not a requirement for this particular user.
It does not mean that a password is not required to access the account in Windows. In other words, it’s saying that it is possible to erase this user’s password.
Assuming there weren’t any problems, you should see a Password cleared! message after entering 1 in the previous step.
Type ! to quit editing user and then press ENTER.
Important: You must confirm these changes in a later step before they are actually complete. If you quit Offline NT Password & Registry Editor now then the password reset will not take place!
Enter q and then press ENTER to quit the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor registry editing tool.
Important: You’re still not done! You need to confirm your password reset change in the next step before it will take effect.
Type y and then press ENTER.
You should see an EDIT COMPLETE message appear on screen. If you do, it means that Offline NT Password & Registry Editor has written the password changes to your computer!
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor gives you an option here to rerun the program.
If you’ve been following along with this guide and everything seems to have worked properly then there’s little reason to repeat anything.
Press ENTER to confirm the default option of not rerunning the password reset.
That’s it! You’ve just completed the entire Offline NT Password & Registry Editor password removal process.
Note: If you receive a “job control turned off” or a “can’t access tty” error, don’t worry.
As long as the EDIT COMPLETE confirmation message was posted to the screen after you confirmed the password reset changes then your password was successfully reset.
You should still be able to see the confirmation on the screen at this point.
Remove the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor disc from your CD/DVD drive and then manually reset your computer.
In the next step, you’ll finally get to logon to Windows without entering a password!
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Option3: Bypass that password
Website: http://www.piotrbania.com/all/kon-boot/
Kon-Boot is a little software that bypasses Windows, Mac, and Linux systems no matter what password is set on.
It’s very helpful ,thus it doesn’t change the already set password, it just bypasses the system (no changes are made to the system).
To accomplish this, Kon Boot hooks the bios on the fly subverting the Windows kernel authentication temporarily and allowing you access.
Since this is a temporary process the computer is back to normal when you reboot. This allowed you to access the computer without having to take the time to reset the password or crack it, and it left the computer untouched. Now, a year later, Kon Boot v1.1 has been released with new features, such as booting from floppy,CD, or usb, privilege escalation support which allows you to SYSTEM privileges from ANY account on the system. For example, you can boot from Kon Boot and log in as Guest and run ‘Net User’ command to add a new user,reset admin passwords etc as SYSTEM
It also has a bunch of new bug fixes/updates.
- - Added 64-bit environment support
- - Added USB support tools (grldr, klmemusb)
- - debugging code to make it easier to track down various compatibility problems
- - Fixed bug in Windows 7 support failures
- - Removed Linux support
- - Many performance improvements to source code
- - Improved BIOS support by reducing code size significantly
Unfortunately it is no longer free. But for a meager price of $15.99 for a personal license, it gives you free updates and support for a period of 6 months.
You can still use it without restrictions after that period. http://www.kryptoslogic.com/?area=2&item=2
Not sure how long the download will be available here but it’s worth a look: http://www.piotrbania.com/all/kon-boot/
If you want the older .ISO that still works on most systems that was available when they were free, you can email me and i’ll send you a link or something.
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