can't log on - forgot password (oops)

[David Vincent]

NoOp wrote:
> On 08/17/2007 07:42 PM, Bruce Ferrell wrote:
>> If you can get it to boot the VM from media, try the bootdisk you'll
>> find below
>>
>> http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
> 
> :-) Yesterday I was given a machine that the local high school was
> throwing in the trash; pretty nice machine (by my standards) -
> 1.6Ghz/512Mb/30Gb+8Gb. (My standard working desktop is
> 450Mhz/324Mb/30Gb+15Gb) It has WindowsXPPro installed on it ++, so I
> figured that I'd like to keep the MS install as a backup for
> troubleshooting windoze & OpenOffice problems. The only problem was that
> it didn't come with a password.
> 
> So, I booted into Knoppix, set a root password, downloaded chntpw from
> the Deb repository (which ntpasswd/bootdisk.html uses), cd'd to
> hda1/WINDOWS/System32/config and ran 'sudo chntpw -u SAM' & set the
> password to a blank (*=blank). Worked like a champ! Booted into windoze
> & now updating & deleting unnecessary bits to trim the disk down, and
> then will use the Ubunut Alternate CD to install Ubuntu. Now if I can
> only figure out how to get the ZenDesktop & other Novell crap out of it
> I'll be fine... :-)

nice score!  free hardware + free software = happy NoOp.  that *is* a 
pretty nice machine to be going into the trash.  don't you have some 
recycling biz around there who would take it and clean it up etc.?

more proof that security means nothing if you have physical access to a 
machine.  :)

-d