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Windows Vista Password Crack.

FallingmanFallingman Registered User regular
edited July 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
Hi.

I'm aware that this will sound dodgy. All I can do is say that it's not, and I'm not using an alt. If you're not comfortable with that, then please feel free not post.

My Grandfather just passed away, and my mother (his daughter) needs to get into his laptop for reasons you can probably imagine. He was alway very sharp, and had begun utilising the internet a lot in the later years.

So, he had a spam problem a wee while back and in his ignorance, put a login password on the machine.

Can anyone point me to a "how to" to get into the machine?

It would be greatly appreciated. I'm not in the same country, but can either talk someone over there through it, or use logmein with my uncles machine if it requires the setup of a disk or something...

[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Fallingman on

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    SyrdonSyrdon Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Depending on what you need access to, you can likely get it by running Ubuntu on a flash drive or maybe by reinstalling windows (that does bring with it a potential loss of data). You can also physically remove the hard drive, put it in another computer and boot on the original drive in that machine. You should be able to what you need to with an administrator account from there if I remember how windows sets things up correctly.

    If the drive is encrypted, then you are really entering some territory where its hard to not misuse the answers (and they're complicated to boot) so you're on your in that case.

    Syrdon on
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    FallingmanFallingman Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Cheers. Nothing complicated or nefarious enough to be encrypted.
    Its more to capture family snaps/histories. And to be honest, if it came down to having to remove a HD, my family probably wouldn't bother.

    Fallingman on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    BlindZenDriverBlindZenDriver Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    As Syrdon says. Boot the system with an OS on a stick, an USB drive or a DVD holding a bootable OS. Google for portable linux and you should find what is needed very quick. Try it out on a computer you have hands on so you're prepared for how it works (it's not complicated). Also having an extra USB stick ready to store the data recovered will come in handy.

    Alternatively you can go the "hacking" direction but it get's complicated and possible time consuming. Since you're only looking for some files and it's very unlikely the disc is encrypted I would not recommend going this route.

    BlindZenDriver on
    Bones heal, glory is forever.
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    BeazleBeazle Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    This has worked for me in the past with clients who have forgotten their passwords

    http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

    Beazle on
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    TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I've used Ophcrack multiple times before to great success. Beazle's link has also worked for me.

    TychoCelchuuu on
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    ben0207ben0207 Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Yeah, OPHCrack will do this without breaking a sweat.

    ben0207 on
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    WillethWilleth Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    I would also recommend the Ubuntu-on-a-USB thing. Not only is it useful for this, it's great in general for extricating things from buggered machines - I used one to grab all my brother's music off his old laptop just the other week. It also gives you peace of mind in that you'll not have to worry about any crazy viruses that might be sitting on the drive - they'll be inactive under Linux, and you can just grab the files you need and go (although it won't protect you if you happen to copy infected files over and boot them under Windows again, of course).

    EDIT: You can grab Ubuntu here, and if you follow the steps it'll show exactly how to make a USB stick that it'll run from. You'll need to change the boot order of your granddad's laptop to boot from USB before the HDD, but that's fairly trivial and covered in the steps on that site. The only thing that might not work off the bat is the wireless card, but for simple file transfer that won't be necessary.

    Willeth on
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    urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited July 2011
    Keep in mind that not all computers can boot from the USB. It may just be better to make a LiveCD.

    urahonky on
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    JustinSane07JustinSane07 Really, stupid? Brockton__BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2011
    You just need data off the PC?

    Take the HDD out and put it in a USB dock.

    No need to fumble around with cracking his password.

    JustinSane07 on
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    FallingmanFallingman Registered User regular
    Thanks guys.
    We're all sorted. We really appreciate the help.

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    BuraisuBuraisu Psychomancer Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    If the person that owned the computer didn't create a password for the default Administrator account, you could use that. It normally defaults as a blank password.

    47uk6agplx83.png
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