Quite frankly, I forgot my password to my Win XP Pro comp after two months abroad.  I tried to get back in using DOS and a boot disk, however, i am running two hard drives, one @ C:, and @ F:.  THe C: drive was supposedly @ FAT32, and the F drive @ FAT32, however, I ran ntfsread.exe from the dos prompt and found that my ‘fat32’ C: drive is actually a FAT12 drive.  Furthermore, while I can see both hard drives from ntfsread.exe, my computer seems to have swapped my F: to my C:, and mapped my C: to my A:, coexisting with my floppy. 
  Er…: Originally, my computer was A: Floppy, C: Main HD, D: DVD & F: 2nd HD.  Now, it’s like this, from the DOS prompt & ntfsread A: Floppy and Main HD, & C: 2nd HD.  Anybody have a FAT12 reader for XP, or a way to remap drives using DOS?

Thanks
~nox

I dont know about the rest of your query but my roomie used to break into my comp. (even after me setting a win xp password) by booting the comp into safemode. Safemode allows u to create a new administrator acct. From there you could del ur old account and login normally with your new account.

Something is definitely wrong. There’s no way your C drive could be FAT12. FAT12 is the format for floppy disks and other small removable media. IIRC it’s limited to 32MB and is readable in just about every OS I’ve used in the past 15 years. How exactly can one drive letter be two drives?

Anyway, here are some tips from the excellent MCSE World for recovering the password.

Quite honestly, I don’t know.  The computer used to work fine, but it was after I booted up ntfsreader (google it), it read it as FAT12. That could be the program error, as my old XP told me it was always 32.  As for two drives…one letter? :cry:  dunno.

~nox

Hey nox, see if you can do what I suggested.

I dont know about the rest of your query but my roomie used to break into my comp. (even after me setting a win xp password) by booting the comp into safemode. Safemode allows u to create a new administrator acct. From there you could del ur old account and login normally with your new account.

I thought there was a xp or nt password cracker out there ..?

I dont know about the rest of your query but my roomie used to break into my comp. (even after me setting a win xp password) by booting the comp into safemode. Safemode allows u to create a new administrator acct. From there you could del ur old account and login normally with your new account.

Is that true does it work? if so that’s a cracker, good old microsoft security!

Oh well, its absolutely true…I password protected windows xp and went off to NY for my holidays and 1 day I returned and was shocked to find him at my comp :x ..when I asked him for an explanation that is what he told me. I tried it a few days later myself and found it to be true. To keep him away from my comp for those few days I had to open it and remove the RAM and a few more components and locked them away. Next time I just password protected the BIOS and warned him if he even tried opening the cabinet and removing the battery (to clear the BIOS password) I would have to tell his parents about his actions.

Just yesterday he told me if u don’t create a username when installing win xp then u cant boot into safe mode and create a new username.

No system is safe if you have physical access to the hardware. That said, XP Home isn’t setup well for security by default. It will be more secure if you set the NT-style login and set a password for the administrator.

I did set a password for the administrator but didn’t have the nt style login enabled. How does the nt style login make things more secure ? Is it more secure because you are expected to type the account name rather than just select one ?

It should require you to log in when in safe mode or not. Mine does, but I’m on XP Pro and logged into a domain at home. It should work the same on XP Home.

Even I run XP Pro.

I just tried a few things :

1) Kept the welcome screen enabled and booted into safe mode…There were 2 accounts…Administrator and Rahul (both admins). If I clicked on Rahul, I needed to enter a password. If I clicked on Administrator, I could login without a password and could create more accounts just like my roommate did (to break in).

2) Disabled the welcome screen and booted into safe mode. I could type “Rahul” and my password to login or just type “Administrator” without a password to login. Then I could proceed to create further accounts.

3) Disabled the welcome screen and booted normally. Again I could type “Rahul” and my password to login or type “Administrator” without a password to login. Again, like before I could proceed to create new accounts.

I tried all of the above with my TR too (which also has XP Pro) and found the same things to be happening. At this rate, keeping that welcome screen enabled may be the best thing since atleast on normal boot you cant type an account so it wouldn’t be possible to login with an “Administrator” account. I however, do not login to any domain.

Looks like you need to give the Administrator account a password. It apparently doesn’t have one.

Yup, that can be done but originally I like many other people didn’t even know that this Administrator account would suddenly popup in safe mode. I simply password protected my account (which was the only account on my comp) and left happily thinking that my roomie could never again use my comp, but he searched on the net and found this way of entry into the system.

Even the Administrator account in safe mode mentions the following:

The administrator account is only visible on the Welcome screen when no other user accounts exist(except the guest account), or when you start your computer in Safe Mode.

:shock: MICROSOFT :shock: <—- This wasn’t mentioned there :wink:

In addition to that, i think you could log-on Administrator account in normal windows’ startup. Simply press alt + ctrl + del two time on the welcome screen. Windows will changes its look to classic style. After that, type in Username as “Administrator” and follow by pwd. That should works ,too.