Windows XP and Me

[Satan's Onion]

So. My father bought a "new" hard drive for me from the local Value Village. I'm not saying I thought this was a good idea, nor am I saying it's a bad one. In fact, I wasn't even consulted. I do know that it's supposed to be better and younger than the one I am using right now (although so would an abacus with a phone cord tied to it), and it has on its hard drive Windows XP Professional (yeah, I want to change that if I can, but that's another thread for after I deal with this). However, my father has run into a certain...problem, and I'm posting here so I can enlist the help of all you big, strong, manly, sexy, presumably quite virile and attractive computer types to help little old me with it so I might have a computer made of marginally less ancient, fail and suck.

It boils down to this: The Windows XP on it requires a password in order to use it, and my father was supplied with no password. I shouldn't like to resort to anything illegal, but if there is a way around this password screen, I'd be ever so grateful to you kind, charming, handsome young studs...

[Krylo]

Are you kidding? Windows Security is entirely infalliable! Your new hard drive is made of FAIL!

[Fifthfiend]

The way I always broke into my sister's computer to read her personal writings circumvented this particular issue for unspecified but wholly innocuous reasons was to turn on the machine, turn it off before it finished booting, then turn it on again, which gave me the option to boot up in Safe Mode, which booted up into a hidden Administrator account which had no password attached and from which you could create new users and edit existing ones at your leisure.

This was in XP-Amateur, dunno if Prostyle is equally negligent in the security of its, um, security.

[MasterOfMagic]

Or...you could just press the key that brings up the menu that allows you to go into safe mode during boot? I believe its F8. Just press it over and over till the menu appears. This way, you don't have to suddenly power down your system, which is kinda bad for the stuff >.>

I can vouch for this method, as I had to use it during the final of one of my classes. We were told to just do everything we could to fuck up a computer without physically damaging the components, and then hand it off to another group, who had to then fix it. It was kinda fun.

[Satan's Onion]

Okay, we need some kind of guidance to get from Safe Mode to this administrator mode of which Fifth speaks, 'cos it doesn't appear to go directly into that when we just wait for it to go back to the XP screen. What, if anything, do we need to do to get there?

[Krylo]

Once you're in safe mode you can go to the control panel and then you can go to user accounts (if you're in classic mode) and then you can make yourself a new admin account, and delete the old one.

[MasterOfMagic]

Okay, we need some kind of guidance to get from Safe Mode to this administrator mode of which Fifth speaks, 'cos it doesn't appear to go directly into that when we just wait for it to go back to the XP screen. What, if anything, do we need to do to get there?
Erm, okay. So we've hit F8 during boot, and selected "Safe Mode" From the Advanced Options menu. It starts up, and takes you to either the old school prompt for user name and password, or the newish menu that lets you select the account you want to login to from a list.

If its the former, just type in Administrator for the User name, and leave the Password blank.

If its the latter...you select Administrator from the list. Pretty simple. Then you do what Krylo said.

EDIT: As a funny aside, I set my Admin account up with a password, and now cannot remember it. >.> Its useless to me now.

[Satan's Onion]

Okay. I've gotten the thing into Safe Mode, I get them to the (classic) password prompt, I type "Administrator" (sans quotes, natch) in the unsername space and leave the password space blank, and...I get a screen telling me my password is incorrect, like if I'd been trying to log on like any old user (I assume). I've also typed "administrator" (no caps), "admin" and "owner" (at my mother's suggestion), each time leaving the password space blank.

[Krylo]

Well you could always put your old hard drive in the machine, set bios to boot off of that, and then try manually creating a new account on the other Hard Drive in the windows file. I don't remember exactly how to do this, but I've done it before for some stupid ass reason.

[Satan's Onion]

There might be a problem with that, in that what I'm running right now is Windows ME--and not even a full copy of ME, we bought the upgrade to ME for a computer that was originally running (and was designed to run, as it says on the tower) Windows 98. Look, I said my machine was ancient and megashitty, and I meant it.

You all feel free to laugh at me now. I'll be too busy weeping bitterly in frustration to notice. (I'm almost--almost--tempted to tell them "Y'know, fuck it, can we just reformat the bastard from Safe Mode? 'Cos seriously, fuck this noise." But I'd prefer to see if we can get this to work first...)

[MasterOfMagic]

Well, nertz. That means they've done what I have, and put a password on the admin account. Meaning, unless you're a good guesser, or have a program to crack it with, you're pretty much locked out from getting in that way.

As to the password crackers, they're not illegal persay, unless you're using them in a certain manner. What you're going for here would be perfectly okay. I'm lax to suggest one to you though, as I've no experience with them, and don't want to recommend some useless POS/spyware-ridden crapfest.

I'm trying to rack my brain for other ways...I can't remember if Recovery Console has something for this or not....I doubt it...

EDIT: This seems like a good page to look at for this problem. (http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm)

EDIT EDIT: Err, ninja'd.

[Meister]

Windows XP Professional (yeah, I want to change that if I can
So just to get this straight, you're not going to use the installed XP anyway? Because in that case, why bother? Try to format it and never look back. Of course that is a lot less cool.

[Demetrius]

Plug it in as a slave, format it and that should end your issues.

[darth vader wannabe]

Okay, I'm going to one suggestion that probably won't work and one piece of advice:

The suggestion: Try "password" for the password. Stranger things have been known to happen.

The advice: If you go with the link that MoM sent you to, don't use the "featured product" unless you've got three days to blow. The way it works is it gives you a string of hexadecimal characters, which you send in to the company. If you pay $20, you can get your password immediately, otherwise, you have to wait three days.

I've used the others, and if I were using them on XP, I think they'd work.

I'll tell you right now: There's nothing quite as humiliating as typoing a password on a 2003 Server computer. At least it was for class and not in a job.