Technofriends

Earlier in one of my post, i wrote about Ophcrack which is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables and can be used to recover Windows Passwords. In today’s article, i will introduce you to yet another freely available open source tool called Offline NT Password & Registry Editor which can be used to reset the password of any user that has a valid account on your Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista etc system.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor doesn’t show you your password like the Ophcrack password recovery tool. Instead, it actually deletes your password allowing access to Windows without any password.

Though cracking passwords is not something that i advice people, but i must let you know that at times there are real “legitimate” reasons when you want to reset Windows passwords. This article is more from an educational perspective than from turning nice human beings into crackers. 

With Offline NT password and Registry Editory, you need not know the old password to set a new password, thereby making it ideal for use in situations when you forgotten the password of your system or got locked out because some script kiddie changed the password of your user account without your knowledge. Offline NT password and Registry Editor also support unlocking of locked or disabled accounts. 

Below are the steps you need to follow in order to Reset any Windows NT/Windows 2k/ Windows XP or Windows Vista password. Though, the instructions below are quite clear, but still bear in mind that you are using the tool at your own risk and this post is meant only for educational / crisis situations. Also, If used on user accounts that make use of EFS encrypted files, all encrypted files will become unreadable unless you enter the old password again. Offline NT Password and Registry Editor does not come with any warranty or support. 

1.) Download and burn the ISO image on a CD. You can download the image from here. 

2.) Modify your BIOS settings to boot from the CD Drive. Enter the CD you just burnt from step 1 and restart the computer. This restart should boot the computer from the CD burnt in step 1. 

3.) Once the computer boots from the CD, you would see the screen as shown in the image above. Usually just press enter here. If you have linux knowledge, you can tweak kernel options if you need/like.

4.) Next the boot process continues and outputs a lot of kernel messages about your hardware. The application will also load drivers in this step. Once the process is complete, you will be shown with various drives which the application has found.

You would be required to select the drive where Windows is installed.

5.) Once you have selected the proper drive, Offline NT Password and Registry Editor would ask you to enter the directory path for registry. The registry is usually system32/config under WINDOWS or WINNT directory, depending on the windows version (and it may be changed during installation). If you wish to select the default entry, press Enter key.

6.) Next, you will asked to choose a task. Offline NT Password and Registry Editor offers 3 tasks at this moment i.e. Password reset [sam system security], RecoveryConsole parameters [software] and quit. 

Select 1  for password resetting.

7. ) Next, the system will ask you for more choices. Press Enter here. This will show another screen with User information.

8.) A list of all local users on the machine is then displayed.The users marked “ADMIN” are members of the administrators group, which means they have admin rights, if you can login to one of them you can get control of the machine.The built in (at install time in all windows versions) administrator is always RID 01f4. This example is from Vista, and Vista by default has this locked down (the installer instead asks and makes another user the regular use administrator, in this case RID 03e8).The “lock?” collumn show if the user account is disabled or locked out (due to many logon attempts for example) or BLANK if the password seems to be blank.

9.) We will select the “admin” user here. This was the user made administrator by the Vista installer.

10.) The system will then give you options to clear out a password by setting it blank. You can also reset a password to some other value, but the author of the application Offline NT Password and Registry Editor also recommends setting a blank password. Pressing Enter ( default choice) will clear out a password and set it as blank. 

11.) Next keep quiting by pressing either !quit or select q from the options menu till you see a screen as shown above. This is the last phase and is important as the changes made to the password are still to be written to the registry. If you forgot something, you may run again, else press CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot.

12.) Once the system says that your edit was complete, you can reboot the system after removing the CD. You should be able to login to the admin userid with a blank password . Once Windows loads, create a new password that you can remember.

In the end, please do remember that this post was intended only to help you get access to your system in times of crucial need. This tool certainly can be dangerous in the hands of a cracker. 

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