XP Password Recovery

boardsie08

Hey guys,


Ok, for the past few days my PC has been getting very unstable, things taking a long time to load, freezing etc... However on running AVG there's no viruses or anything unusal showing up other than a few low level risk spyware programs which it removed anyhow.

However earlier today it yet again crashed so I had to plug it off at the mains to restart it, when it restarted it wouldn't accept my password to log into windows, it kept saying that the password was incorrect.

Now I know for sure that the password is correct if I typed it in once I typed it in 100 times in the past few hours, all to no avail.

No one else has been using my computer so there's no possibility that anyone could have changed it.

Do you reckon I may have picked up some particularly nasty virus which changed my password or encrypted it?

Well whatever it is, I'm now locked out of my computer, I cannot access it at all.

The only options I'm left with are to Turn Off, Restart, or go on Standby mode.

I'm not able to get into Safemode when the pc starts up either.

It's driving me nuts, I've been tinkering with it all evening and I badly need to get it working asap as I work from home.

I'm desperate, can anyone advise a way around this, logging onto windows bypassing the password, or recovering it, changing it, anything at all??

I have my system recovery disks that came with my PC but I really don't want to have to resort to wiping everything...

Any advice at all will be greatly appreciated!!!

Cheers!!

Sherifu

First things first: Is caps lock on?
Next: if you can get to safe mode and log in as administrator, leave password blank[whats wrong with your safe mode?]
[edit - no cracks please read charter]

boardsie08

Hi there!

thanks so much for the quick response!

Caps - no definitely not on, I can't understand how it's not accepting it.. Keyboards working fine also!

Safemode - I can't see any option to get into safemode when it boots up like I could with my old PC, is there a standard key to press to get into safemode on pc's?

[edit - no cracks please read charter]

Sherifu

safemode - tap F8 after the bios screen.

boardsie08

Whoooo!

Delighted, got in with Safe Mode, in the Administrator account now, thank you so so sooo much!!

Just one more Q though, when I'm in the Admin account, will I need to know the password to my regular account before I can change it to a new one or how do I go about it?

I'm in the Admin a/c now with Safe mode.

Sherifu

start>right click on my computer>click manage>click on user accounts>right click the account>change password.

boardsie08

Sorry to be a total pain, but I'm in Computer Management (Start > Right Click Computer > Manage) and I can't see sign of User Profiles anywhere..

All I see is stuff like:

System tools
event viewer
shared folders
performance logs
device manager etc etc..

Btw, I really appreciate the help, you're an absolute legend!!

Sherifu

What's there if you expand system tools?

boardsie08

System Tools:
-Event Viewer
-Shared Folders
-Performance logs and alerts
-Device Manager

That's it, then the next category is Storage, and after that Services and Applications

Pacifico

Go to control panel > user accounts

Change or remove the password there

Sherifu

Do you have Local Users and Groups as above?

boardsie08

Rkm, yup I have all those sub-categories as listed underneath Device Manager.

Pacifico, I've just removed the password on my account via control panel, so hopefully that's that sorted! Thanks a million!

Rkm - as I said I've done what Pacifico suggested, so hopefully that's all there is to it?

Thank you both for your help, especially you RKM and for going to the trouble of putting up a screen shot!

Cheers guys!!

Pacifico

Is it XP Home edition yeah?

boardsie08

Yeah that's the one!

Is it ok to reboot again now and hopefully log in normally successfully or is there anything else I need to do beforehand whilst still in Safemode?

Pacifico

Yeah just restart and there should be no log in screen.

You're lucky XP Home is so insecure

boardsie08

It worked, it worked! *does a happy dance*

Thanks ever so much guys! I'm seriously indebted to ye!

Just out of curiosity.. any thoughts on how this could have happened?

As I said I know for sure no-one changed the password, and I certainly didn't forget it, are there any known viruses that do this?

Sherifu

It could be a virus I suppose. I've never come across one that changed passwords though. If I were you i'd go back into safe mode and do a full virus scan and spyware scan to be sure.

kaiser sauze

Pacifico wrote: »

Yeah just restart and there should be no log in screen.

You're lucky XP Home is so insecure

I have mine password protected on the BIOS, Admin account and my own personal account. Guest account is turned off.

Not so easy now.

Original poster, glad you got sorted.

Dante1979

I'm having the exact same problem. But when I go into safe mode and click on Administrator. I get System could not log you on
Its a Dell running Xp Sp2.
I bought a new machine and its just been sitting there. Now I need to get information off it.
Can anyone advise?

mp22

Download a linux live cd (i use ubuntu) and boot the pc from the cd/dvd drive, you should be able to get at almost all the info on the pc.

Ghost Train

this will reset admin password, as long as no encryption is being files should not get deleted etc
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/