Vista - Admin User Password

A friend of my sisters has asked me to look at her PC, as it keeps "just crashing". A thorugh technical description to help I know!.

However, I have found that the PC, which is running Vista Home Premium, has 3 user accounts.

1) Admin account with password
2) Standard User
3) Guest

I can not log into the admin account as I do not have the password, and my sisters friend is unreachable.

The standard user account, wont letme do anything remotely techy, or use any system tools, or install my own PC diagnostic tools. The user account doesn't have the correct permission. It wont even update any of the virus definitions with out asking for the password.

I have a copy of Active Password changer, that I have used in the past in these circumstances, but the PC was bought from a big retail chain, and has been set up with the usual hidden partion with important files on it. So Active Password Changer can not see the partion with the SAM database on it to change the admin password.

Any ideas on how I can move forward?

Hi,

You could try this,

Boot in from the cd you create with it, it finds all the installed o/s (probably only one in your case ). Highlight it and Next, it finds the accounts, highlight the one you want and Next. Tick the password is empty and Next, select No if it asks if you want to do anything else.

PCLoginNow, Reset or Recover Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista Administrator Password.

Hope it helps

siw2

Thanks for that.

I've managed to get hold of a copy of the MSeRD suite as well. So I'm gonna give that a crack.

It's just the hidden partition that is messing things up.

MSeRd sounds interesting - do you have a link for that ?

SIW2

There is also other ways to get the admin password without resetting it.

1:

Boot up with a vista disk and enter cmd mode and activate the "secret" admin account.
(this way will make you another admin account)

2:

*** REMOVED ***

Good Luck,

Hi SIW2, I have found a couple of links for you at microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ent...ucts/dart.aspx Just gives a brief run down of it.

Download details: Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset This the download link from MS for a 30 evaluation copy of v5.0 which is for XP machines. To use on Vista based machines you need a copy v6.0

Roger's Security Blog : Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset A 3rd party review for the tool set.

I gotta admit it is a really good piece of kit from MS