PCTech Forums

I have a dell laptop windows 2000 professional o/s my brother's ex changed all the passwords including admin and destroyed the cds for the o/s so I am totally locked out of the computer. Password hacker programs may not work on this o/s cuz it is practically hackfree if I can reformat it and load in my xp o/s or if anyone knows how to fix my problem. My bro told me i could have it if i could fix it, so im trying lol any suggestions help?

I read an article a few weeks back about stolen laptops--(the new ones). It you set a pasword prompt on boot of the system, it sets an eprom on the laptop motherboard that has to be unsodered and removed and a new one put in, in order to use the system. So if its set on yours, it could be a pretty expensive procedure.

But if you can boot to the os and then get a pasword prompt, you should be able to toast the os with fdisk.

Follow link, it will give you all the instructions on how to change lost passwords.

You will have to download the NT Password boot disk image.

The main issue is whether she pasworded windows, or the BIOS. If it's the BIOS then you may have to return the machine to dell. If it's only windows then that's easy - reinstallng it will reset all the passwords, or you can use a DOS bootdisk (add NTFS reader from www.sysinternals.com if the drive was formatted with NTFS) to grab the sam file, and use l0pht (google for the homepage) to crack the password

If it is the case that she passworded the BIOS, here is a link that may help

net user Administrator password

use that in dos... it will change ur administrator accounts password.

http://www.softheap.com/security/going_to_them.html


check that out for some referance if you perfer