Resetting the admin password

[dolmandj]

Hi

 

Just taken over a school and the company before us made an admin account but it is limted. I need to get the full administrator password so i can install programs and do other basic maintenance

 

any ideas

 

cheers

 

darren

[TwoZeroAlpha]

Ophcrack live CD? Will recover passwords from NTLM hashes.

[dolmandj]

am i right in gussing that the server has to be resarted to run this program

 

any other ways of doing the job without resarting the server

 

darren

[kmount]

Contact the previous company and ask them for the "real" password since they're no longer maintaining it?

[dolmandj]

Have try this without any luck

[kmount]

Then I'm afraid a decision has to be made.

 

1) Take them to task for a botched handover.

 

2) Try and crack the password but you'll need to reboot the server.

[adhutton]

We have used this before - it works really well, but will require a reboot as far as I know - don't think it works from within Windows:

 

A@PC: Windows Password Recovery Software. Reset Administrator Password. XP VISTA 2008 2003 2000 NT.

 

Andrew

[kmount]

Must admit I've never tried this on a domain controller so ...

 

I assume there isn't a logged in session at the console in the school you could use?

[SYNACK]

If you have an admin level account you can simply reset the administrator account password in AD Users and Computers. You will need to check that there are not any services or scheduled tasks that are set to use this account, if there are you will need to enter the new password in there to.

 

For other desktop computers you should be able to logon as a domain admin and simply change the password with local user manager for the local administrator or by using a script.