I have an old pc from work can't log on

ericclapton

Hi,

I got an old Dell pc with windows 2000 professional from work. Don't have password or username. Any ideas. Thanks

EKRIUQ

Did you try asking the owner for it?

ericclapton

They were pc's that were not being used now with people moving on and people getting new ones. It's cosher, but can't get it working

JDxtra

Thats mad. Your company should have at the very least scrubbed the hard drive!. No excuse not to really. Hope you dont work in a bank...!

Mr. Presentable

ctr-alt-delete try log on as Administrator. It's just possible no password was set on that account. Best bet though is to get a Win 2000 CD and reinstall, resetting all the accounts.

mrgaa1

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_passwords.htm
try this or at least google the answer. I've got past this before but can't remember how. I do remember googling the answer

unnameduser

JDxtra wrote: »

Thats mad. Your company should have at the very least scrubbed the hard drive!. No excuse not to really. Hope you dont work in a bank...!

your on the ball there.

OP i advise that if you have a licensed version of an O.S. then format the H,D and reinstall. If nothing else you will be getting a fresh system.

Seriously though, a machine from work just thrown at an employee!! The mind boggles.

the_dark_side

if your not into reinstalling the whole thing etc. try opening up the pc, and look on the mother board, somewhere theres a small chip, usually black, with pwd in white written on it... pull it out, then try logging on again

unnameduser

prob better off clearing it.

Did you get it legitimately? If so it should have been wiped.

Either way wipe it. For a number of reasons.

jaffa20

hmm stolen pc?

Your workplace would have cleared the hard drive surely.

unnameduser

you would think so but then again ... i have seen several situations where ppl have not seen the potential of damage ... I think the OP is prob genuine. Sure if you really wanted to crack a machine i only takes a few searches, If i was the OP id be employee of the month and have a chat with the person who released the machines unformatted.

quaidox

the_dark_side wrote: »

if your not into reinstalling the whole thing etc. try opening up the pc, and look on the mother board, somewhere theres a small chip, usually black, with pwd in white written on it... pull it out, then try logging on again

never heard of this before!!!

tman

quaidox wrote: »

never heard of this before!!!

Most likely because it will only service to break the computer...

quaidox

tman wrote: »

Most likely because it will only service to break the computer...

thought so alright!!!

Capt'n Midnight

jumpers on the motherboard only allow you to reset the BIOS password and have nothing to do with windows, if you see a windows logo then ignore.

if you reinstall windows over the top it will inherit the curent password, you could install windows in a separate folder

or use the password reset disk http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ to reset the administrator password

snowyeoghan

very simple solution: Ophcrack
Its opensource. Download it, make a bootable cd with it and boot the machine from the disc.
It cracks all user accounts and associated passwords using rainbow tables and can recover them in an matter of seconds!
Badabing your in.

ericclapton

Hi all, I tried all of the above ideas but got no joy. Only get as far as novell userame and password

snowyeoghan

ericclapton wrote: »

Only get as far as novell userame and password

If you used Ophcrack correctly you shouldnt have gotten the Novell login window.

If you havent already done so...on another pc obviously:

(1) Download the Ophcrack Live CD (This is the ISO version)
(2) Next make a bootable cd with the ISO using PowerISO
(3) Turn on the machine that you want to find the password, with the cd in the drive
(4) Change the boot sequence to boot from the CD first; press something like F2. It depends on your machine...
(5) If you have done so correctly, it will not go to the Novell window but it will look like a Linux Operating Sys...then crack the password and username...

I cant really explain it better. There are plenty of tutorials on the web and ophcrack in action on youtube.

Good Luck

Special K

Turn on computer, press [either F4 or F8, cant remember which exactly!] and keep pressing it repeatedly, start computer in safe mode. When starts as safe mode, log into a/c, go to control panel - user accounts - remove password. This should work.

I'm pretty sure it's F8 actually. Scrap the F4

uch

This is what I always use, never failed me. http://www.openwall.com/john/

eshortie

Unless you need to access data on it just format and reinstall the OS. On Dell Machines there's usually a facility to reinstall the OS without a disk.....it's from a partition. Just hold CTRL and keep pressing F11 while it boots, instead of goin to windows you get a screen to reinstall the OS.

Works on my machine and many others, possibly not with this older machine.

CCSL

Try booting into safe mode then go into network properties, card properties
and remove the client for netware software from the list. if you cant do that try and source a copy of Winternals ERD just boot from the cd and reset the password with the reset utility.

clive_odonohoe

i locked myself out of my old laptop before....:rolleyes: to remove the password, log in through safe mode. Then do the following:

start>run, then type the word "prefetch"

this will bring up a list of all the saved passwords on the system, which you can delete safely.

log out and you can log in without any password and create a new one

Capt'n Midnight

wow - was it windows ME ?

with 95 /98 you just deleted the .pwl files

or pressed escape when it asked you for a password



NT / 2000 / XP / Vista use the passwd to stop you logging on , the others just used it to identify you

clive_odonohoe

No it was xp. I had to ring up dell technical support and thats what they instructed me to do. Some of my friends had even locked themselves out of their computers and it worked just fine for them as well.

mp22

clive_odonohoe wrote: »

i locked myself out of my old laptop before....:rolleyes: to remove the password, log in through safe mode. Then do the following:

start>run, then type the word "prefetch"

this will bring up a list of all the saved passwords on the system, which you can delete safely.

log out and you can log in without any password and create a new one

did you delete all the files you found in that folder?