[Archived] Help Needed

[Grabbi Graeme]

My son has forgotten his password to get into Windows XP on his computer, any tech people out there with suggestions on how I can reset or bypass so he can get into XP.

[Biddy]

There will also be an administrator account on Windows XP so presuming you know that password (it might not be set), you can login with that account by following this:-

"The built-in Administrator account is hidden from Welcome Screen when a user account with Administrator privileges exists and enabled. In Windows XP Home Edition, you can login as built-in Administrator in Safe Mode only. For XP Professional, press CTRL + ALT + DEL twice at the Welcome Screen and input your Administrator password in the classic logon window that appears."

If you can get in like that, right click on "My Computer" and choose Manage. Select Local Users, right click on your sons account and choose "set Password".

If you don't know the Administrator password then try the bootdisk from this website NT Password Recovery

The CD image is about 3/4 the way down in the download section. Burn that to CD and boot from it. It will take you through boot to a linux program that allows you to select the user and reset the password. I only have success setting it to a blank password, never seems to work actually setting one. It's fairly straight forward, the defaults usually do it only changing where you select the user (as it defaults to the admin account). Good luck.