Windows password

[Gekko]

Hello,

I wish you can help me. I've lost password of my windows vista account. I can't login, this is the admin account. Is there any way to change/reset/restore password ?

[nighthawk]

You should have separate (Administrator) account. Password is set during the installation. Do you know that password?

[webmaster]

Maybe there isn't any password, have you tried logging in without writing anything in the password-field ?

[tombothetominator]

this is the admin account

So recovering the password is a royal pain.

Never used it before, but i've heard some good things about this: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

Or if you want a clean copy of windows anyway, slave the drive to another computer, copy over whatever data you want to save, then reinstall.

Maybe others know of better way?

[nighthawk]

You can hack xp with a program called saminside. You load SAM (doesn't have an extesion) file from (usually) windows/repair folder, and after few hours you should get your password(s) in plain text. I'm not sure that this will work with vista.


One curiosity, windows use very strong encryption (someone told me, but I'm not sure about thus - this is a megabit encryption) and it gets hacked for 30 minutes on an average PC. MD5 is 32 bit encryption, and up to this day it is unbrakeable.