Forgotten Domain admin password.

[Potato-Peeler]

Hi, In a fairly sticky situation, a friends small business has one server, running Windows small business server 2008. It is the DC. There is one account with domain rights, the domain admin and the password has been forgotten. Besides a format anyone got any ideas?

[andydis]

Wout Ware Blog | How to reset the domain administrator password on Windows Server 2008 with just the Windows Installation Disk

[dhicks]

Besides a format anyone got any ideas?

 

Ophcrack

 

--

David Hicks

[FN-GM]

Wout Ware Blog | How to reset the domain administrator password on Windows Server 2008 with just the Windows Installation Disk

 

I think this will only reset the local password. As the server is a DC it will be an active directory password.

[kmount]

I think this will only reset the local password. As the server is a DC it will be an active directory password.

 

The bottom line of the blurb on that site says

 

There are a bunch of commercial tools to reset the administrator password, but there is no need for it! Furthermore most of them seem to reset just the local administrator account's password, rather than the domain administrator password.

 

Maybe it will do the domain one.

[FN-GM]

maybe then, i didnt read that

[kmount]

Be good if the OP let us know, it's probably a useful thing to have around

[PiqueABoo]

Wow... you can just spot the folk who haven't ever spent time tunnelling geeky dos shell commands littered with ampersands and carets through itsy-bitsy-little-holes a mile off!

 

The only niggling doubt I've got is whether WRP might notice you've changed utilman[1], but assuming you've got a cmd shell runnning in local system context **on a domain controller** net user accountname... definitely operates on AD accounts (and if it that weren't the case you could always throw a /domain on the end of the command).

 

 

[1] In which case there will likely be some other suitable service binary you can temporarily replace that's outside the protective umbrella.

[Potato-Peeler]

Cheers for the advie people, I will hopefully be testing it tomorrow

[box_l]

Maybe boot the server with KON-BOOT - ULTIMATE WINDOWS/LINUX HACKING UTILITY :-), then change the password to something new.

 

BoX

[Potato-Peeler]

Did the way where you change utilman.exe to a cmd prompt, and it works great!