I do it regularly when I get a PC in either for me or for sale later.

 

I kill the sys and rebuild it.

 

 

later system MAY need a re-flash of the bios, but a dos boot from floppy and run the code works great )

 

IF you can boot into a dos shell, and run command: scanreg/restore, then go to the erliest date you can find, if the `puter`s not that old, you can sometimes boot into the sys before the passy was set too

 

but that`s a last ditch method only!

Can we quit bringing up cookies? , unless someone has some milk or something.

 

*--mossoi-- I think a lot of people in this thread are missing a major point. If the admin account is password protected then there is no way onto the machine. For those of you advising booting into safe mode to bypass the security, we're not talking FAT32 anymore, and if the machine has been set up correctly there is no way in. *

 

??. R U sure? Ive done it on mine, my schools ( not for 3vil , anything with windows. I even set up an account to make double, nay triple sure that you can do it, and, ya.

I'm not saying it won't work on some machines but a 2000 or XP machine that's had the OS installed correctly for use on a network or with security in mind won't allow this. The nice fluffy XP logon screen is replaced with the ctrl-alt-del GINA in normal mode or safe. Without a password there is no way in.

 

If the HDD itself is password protected it's as good as useless, even the manufacturer of the drive would not be able to bypass that security. It's incredibly unlikely anybody would turn that on though.

 

YT - what decade are you in?

To get the windows admin password, boot up a live linux cd. Mount your floppy drive and the NTFS partition. Copy over the windows password file (look up where it is, I forget and don't use XP). Take the floppy to a windows machine you have access to and run a password cracker on it. Tada. More info all over the internet on the various programs to use and such. I think The Screen Savers did a dark tip on it.

 

If the hard drive is ATAPI protected, then you can still access it. That's how people soft hack the xbox. When the machine is booting and unlocking the hd you just hot swap the IDE cables with another machine.

To mossoi: Aha! your right. ya, the ctrl-alt-del screen is supposed to prevent that. I forgot, my bad : )