One method of gaining access to the system is by trying hard to remember the forgotten password, or a password of another user which has the same level of administrative rights. However I don't think this approach will help you, otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here reading article, would you?)
Another method is by trying to restore a backed up System State (in Windows 2000/XP/2003) or a ERD (in NT 4.0) in which you do remember the password. The problem with doing so is that you'll probably lose all of the recently add users and groups, and all the changed passwords for all of your users since the last backup was made.
A third method might be to install a parallel operating system on a different partition on the same computer, then use a simple trick to gain access to the old system. Read more about it on my Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Alternate Logon Trick article.
Note: If you are looking for password cracking tools that can be used for miscellaneous objectives such as password-protected PDF documents, zipped archives, Office documents, BIOS protection and so on then this pages is NOT for you. See some links at the bottom of this page for hints on where to find such tools, but I can tell you right away that Google might be a better choice for you.
The fourth option is by using 3rd party tools that will enable you to reset the lost password and logon with a blank password.
EBCD – Emergency Boot CD (v0.61 - October 2004)
EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally working system and restore system to saved state. It contains the best system software ever created, properly compiled and configured for the maximum efficient use.
EBCD will be very useful when you need to:
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Copy/move files (with long names, not necessary in CP437 encoding) from/to the disk but OS which can handle them (windows, Linux...) cannot boot. In particular, you may create a backup copy of normally installed and configured Windows and later restore Windows from such backup copy. So, in the case of fault OS itself and all software and its settings can be restored in 5-10 minutes.
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Perform emergency boot of Windows NT / 2000 / XP. When the loader of this OS on the hard disk is damaged or misconfigured, you are able to load OS using another, standalone loader from this CD.
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Recover master boot record of HDD. This allows to boot OS after incorrect uninstallation of custom loader (LILO, for example), which made all OS on your PC not bootable.
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Delete, move, copy to file (image) and re-create partition from file. Image transfer over network is also supported: so you may configure one PC and then make contents of hard disks of other PCs same as contents of the hard disk of the first one.
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Change password of any user, including administrator of Windows NT/2000/XP OS. You do not need to know the old password.
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Recover deleted file, even file re-deleted from Windows Recycle Bin, and, in contrast, wipe single file or a whole disk so that it will be impossible to recover it in any way.
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Recover data from accidentally formatted disk. Sometimes it helps to recover data from the disk, damaged by a virus.
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Recover data from a floppy disk, which is not readable by OS. Format 3.5" disk for 1.7 Mb size.
Also the disk includes full set of external DOS commands, console versions of the most popular archivers/compressors.
Moreover, emergency boot CD includes minimal Linux distribution (Rescue Linux distribution) which may be very useful to a professional user.
Download links:
EBCD Pro distribution (18mb)
John the Ripper (v1.7.0.1)
John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix (11 are officially supported, not counting different architectures), DOS, Win32, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypt(3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix flavors, supported out of the box are Kerberos AFS and Windows NT/2000/XP LM hashes, plus several more with contributed patches.
Download links:
John the Ripper 1.7.0.1 (1.32mb)
