Thread: Repairing Windows and Recovery

You could try to crack the password with Ophcrack. If it fails to determine your admin password, there's probably a way to reset it with Knoppix. First try Ophcrack and let us know how it goes.

will that only work on a master? or will it work on a slave too?

get a Linux liveCD
(Either Knoppix or Ubuntu will do fine)

once booted in the liveCD
do:

Code:

apt-get install chntpw

this will download and install the program "chntpw" (change NT password)

Mount the windows partition
open up a terminal, and navigate to
windows/system32/config
and run chntpw (change "administrator" to the username you want to change the password for)

Code:

chntpw -u administrator SAM

You will be prompted for a password
(if you want to remove the password completely, enter an asterisk at the prompt)

reboot and login to windows using the newly changed password

sounds complicated

Yeah, what Ynot said is exactly what I was thinking of. As for Ophcrack working on a drive attached as a slave, I don't know. You can download it for free and try it. If it doesn't work, just download a bootable Linux distro like Knoppix, burn it to a CD, boot it up, and run chntpw.

What the previous posters failed to observe is that there is already a special live CD of with Ophcrack pre-installed available on the Ophcrack page. Download the ISO, burn and run.

Pay more attention, guys

ophcrack is fine if you want to leave no evidence of a system compromise
but password cracking takes time

it's far quicker & easier just to reset it

I'm confused. Help me out. :/

What is a "repair console" and why would you need to repair Windows only because you change the motherboard?

What exactly is on the hard drive? And what do you need the password for? For the hard drive (ATA-locked) or for some sort of software that is on the hard drive?

Why not just mash the hard drive and make a clean reinstall?

OEM systems confuse the hell out of me.

Korittke, he wants to get his data back.

Originally Posted by Identity X

What the previous posters failed to observe is that there is already a special live CD of with Ophcrack pre-installed available on the Ophcrack page. Download the ISO, burn and run.

Pay more attention, guys

I already told him about Ophcrack. Pay more attention to the above posts. Knoppix was only if Ophcrack failed, i.e. if the OP's version of Windows salts the admin password. I don't know enough about Windows to know if that's the case, hence my mentioning of Knoppix and Ynot's explanation of chntpw.

Edit: Oh wait, you're point is that you could do chntpw from the Ophcrack LiveCD if Ophcrack fails. Haha, I didn't think of that. Point taken.

Originally Posted by dsr

Korittke, he wants to get his data back.

What's hindering him from doing so? Why not copy it over?
Considering all he did was switch a motherboard, the HDD data should be thoroughly untouched. His inability to access the drive would indicate an ATA-lock to me.

Note that I am still talking from the position of a confused one so I probably missed something.

windows tends to do weird things if you change the motherboard

dropping back onto the 60 day trial, and locking out features, that sort of thing
all in the name of anti-piracy

(Windows doesn't know you've only changed the motherboard, all it sees it different hardware - for all it knows, you've mirrored the hard drive, and given it to a friend, to save him from buying Windows - so it assumes piracy and acts accordingly)

I'm not saying this is the case here

From the first post, his motherboard's given out, causing the machine to die, and this has busted windows - corrupted something (as to what, your guess is as good as mine)

he needs to repair it, but can't without the admin password
as before, easiest way back into the system without reinstalling windows is to reset the admin password, and repair it as per windows' own insistence

Just plain reinstalling windows is not guaranteed to fix the issue
(depending on exactly what has gone wrong - could be corrupt filesystem, in which case he's going to lose everything)
at least going through another OS, he's got a chance of salvaging any data on the disk if it turns out to be unrepairable

I thought XP upwards single-user licenses consider a new motherboard a new system and therefore in any case piracy.
If he got into the repair menu, the drive must be working. Why not just copy all the stuff and trash the sucker. Who needs dual Windows, one is bad enough.

now it seems that the rainbow table mirrors on the ophcrack website dont work

All you should need to download is the LiveCD: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/oph...4&big_mirror=0

it seems that ophcrack has redone their website but due to low bandwith, im looking at about a 13 hour download

well it seems like ophcrack did not work so i figure i'll just try to reset the password. do you think you could give a little more specific tutorial on how to use knoppix?

ophcrack also did not work for me..i was trying to crack an admin password for windows vista home premium.