Reset/Recover Admin Password on Limited User Acct?

I don't understand why all of these answers are out here that seem like such an easy solution when there is just NO way! I've tried every trip and tip listed on every web site I can find and even paid for services that say they can fix it, and NONE worked. Why would I go into safemode, to control userpasswords2, etc etc when it does nothing unless you sign in as an admin!!!! IF I had the ability to sign in as the admin, I would not have this problem!!!!! I am using a limited user account, I CANNOT sign in as the admin because that is the account I don't have the password for. So please, spare me the usual yada yada yada for this fix, because unless it's something I can do from a limited user account WITHOUT signing in as an admin, then it will do me no good. Thanks for your time....

PJ

Lets try this one more time. I cannot log into Admin on MY laptop. It belongs to me, unless someone else is offering to pay the bill for it. I was out of the country for one month and had changed my admin password before I left so I could keep my kid out of my work files. I have yet to see the name of one program that I have not burnt to cd and tried, put on floppy and tried or put on a jump drive and tried. Any other option I have tried says DENIED ACCESS because you must be logged on as admin, which I cannot do....

Download and burn 'ophcrack' boot it on the computer and it'll crack your password.

It's all automatic and easy ...

1) Just Google around for 'ophcrack' it's a bit of an ISO so depends on your internet connection here.

2) Burning should take about 3-5 minutes. If you need a burning program use IMGBURN.

3) Boot the computer with the disc in, check the BIOS boot seq. so it checks the CD drive before the hard disk or you'll end up back in XP.

4) Just sit and wait ... usually you don't need to press anything, it'll look at your hard disk and grab the encypted password and usernames then it'll crack them all.

It'll pretty much crack anything, I've done long passwords with numbers in minutes.

It's not possible to decrypt XP passwords as they are 'one way', so what happens is it'll form a hash of the password 'a' and the hash code assigned is compared to the hash of the password and it keeps going through until they match and bingo.

Quick disclaimer - make sure you have full permission of the owner before doing this.

-= EDIT =-

Um, what's wrong with 'ophcrack'? it should work perfectly for what you are doing? It boots into it's own Linux based O/S and cracks it away from Windows.

Typed it into Youtube and there are guides for it.

eg, http://youtube.com/watch?v=SmlNqo7UODE&f...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l0IWMvD0wGE&f...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aIu5Xy301RM&f...

Thanks. I have tried this and once again got nowhere. Due to being logged on as a limited account user, the system will not permit me to download, anything. So as simple as this may seem, I cannot use this to resolve this problem. Report It

Do you have a legitimate reason to sign in as admin on this machine? If not, then you'd probably be breaking the law trying to circumvent password protection.

Even though you log in as an Admin with the account you have, it has limits.

In other words, you don't have full administrator priveleges. click the start menu.
In the bottom search bar type cmd (don't hit enter)

cmd will show in the list on top .. right click on it and click to run as administrator

the command panel will open
type this command exactly as it appears here.. or just copy and paste it in the cmd panel

net user administrator /active:yes

hit enter and it should tell you it completed successfully.

close the cmd panel and log off of windows.

When you log back on you should have a new Admin log on