Locked out of w7 pro 64 bit

Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's mistake -

I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try.
Can I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
something? Thanks.

On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:51:36 -0500, Nancy wrote:

> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's mistake -
>
> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try.
> Can I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
> something? Thanks.

If you didn't create a password reset disk, you'll have to track down
some third party password resetting software. I have no idea whether any
such software exists for free or at a reasonable price.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

"Nancy" <> wrote in message
news:LJVeo.53987$...
> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's
> mistake -
>
> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to change
> the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But the
> local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it does not
> have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to it as it
> will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try. Can I reset
> the local admin password through the recovery console or something?
> Thanks.

You may be able to use the recovery console to invoke System restore to
revert to a time when the machine was on the domain, and reset the passwords
from within the user account.

For example,
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/wind...ord-windows-7/


But If you're going to consider resetting the password from outside the
account, you must also be aware of the risk that this will likely also
instantly lock you out of any files or folders encrypted with the native
encryption scheme, unless you have the keys backed up and on hand.

On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:51:36 -0500, Nancy wrote:

> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's
> mistake -
>
> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try. Can
> I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
> something? Thanks.

Last time I checked which, admittedly, was some time ago, the Knoppix
Linux Live DVD had a utility to reset an MS admin password.

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote:
> Nancy wrote:

>> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
>> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
>> the local admin account was disabled.

Why did you remove the machine from the domain? There's no need to do that
to either use or change a local account password unless the domain is
imposing an unreasonably limiting GPO on the machine, in which case your
situation nicely demonstrates why it's not a good idea.

By default the local ADMINISTRATOR account is disabled in Windows 7. You
have to take explicit steps to enable it. (This can also be done by a GPO.)
There should be at least one additional local account that has local
administrator privileges.

One other possibility to consider: some organizations not only disable the
local Administrator account; they also rename it to something else, then
create a totally unprivileged local account named "ADMINISTRATOR" to serve
as a target for malware: even if the malware succeeds in hacking into that
account it has no privileges that can be exploited. The usable account with
local administrator rights will be something else.

>> I managed to enable it, but it
>> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
>> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try.

How did you enable the account? If you were able to gain the right to do
that you should have had the right to change its password.


>> Can I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
>> something? Thanks.

I'm guessing that the domain was at your place of work. Have you
talked to the IT staff there? It's not unlikely that they've run
into this problem repeatedly and have a tool they've tested and found
to work that will forcibly change the password.


> If you didn't create a password reset disk, you'll have to track down
> some third party password resetting software. I have no idea whether any
> such software exists for free or at a reasonable price.

....and if you find a tool that does that, make certain that it's known to
work with Windows 7. Last fall I ran some tests of the old Winternals ERD
against 32-bit Windows 7; I've been using that tool for years when people
pull their XP systems out of the domain and don't know their local
administrator password...but it trashed the Win7 system. (The saving grace:
I was going to reformat the disk anyway so I lost nothing of interest.)

I wasn't completely surprised; even on XPSP3 the ERD frequently left the
volume dirty bit set, strongly suggesting that it didn't quite know how to
handle the latest tweaking of NTFS.

I've not had that happen again but I'm very leery of using tools that aren't
explicitly known to be compatible with Windows 7. I have a copy of DaRT in
house, but since we use 64-bit Win7 I'm stuck until Checkpoint finally
ponies up a 64-bit DaRT-compatible interface for the Pointsec full-disk
encryption tool.

Joe Morris

On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:28:09 -0400, Joe Morris wrote:

> "Gene E. Bloch" wrote:
>> Nancy wrote:
>
>>> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
>>> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
>>> the local admin account was disabled.
>
> Why did you remove the machine from the domain? There's no need to do that
> to either use or change a local account password unless the domain is
> imposing an unreasonably limiting GPO on the machine, in which case your
> situation nicely demonstrates why it's not a good idea.
>
> By default the local ADMINISTRATOR account is disabled in Windows 7. You
> have to take explicit steps to enable it. (This can also be done by a GPO.)
> There should be at least one additional local account that has local
> administrator privileges.
>
> One other possibility to consider: some organizations not only disable the
> local Administrator account; they also rename it to something else, then
> create a totally unprivileged local account named "ADMINISTRATOR" to serve
> as a target for malware: even if the malware succeeds in hacking into that
> account it has no privileges that can be exploited. The usable account with
> local administrator rights will be something else.
>
>>> I managed to enable it, but it
>>> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
>>> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try.
>
> How did you enable the account? If you were able to gain the right to do
> that you should have had the right to change its password.
>
>
>>> Can I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
>>> something? Thanks.
>
> I'm guessing that the domain was at your place of work. Have you
> talked to the IT staff there? It's not unlikely that they've run
> into this problem repeatedly and have a tool they've tested and found
> to work that will forcibly change the password.
>
>
>> If you didn't create a password reset disk, you'll have to track down
>> some third party password resetting software. I have no idea whether any
>> such software exists for free or at a reasonable price.
>
> ...and if you find a tool that does that, make certain that it's known to
> work with Windows 7. Last fall I ran some tests of the old Winternals ERD
> against 32-bit Windows 7; I've been using that tool for years when people
> pull their XP systems out of the domain and don't know their local
> administrator password...but it trashed the Win7 system. (The saving grace:
> I was going to reformat the disk anyway so I lost nothing of interest.)
>
> I wasn't completely surprised; even on XPSP3 the ERD frequently left the
> volume dirty bit set, strongly suggesting that it didn't quite know how to
> handle the latest tweaking of NTFS.
>
> I've not had that happen again but I'm very leery of using tools that aren't
> explicitly known to be compatible with Windows 7. I have a copy of DaRT in
> house, but since we use 64-bit Win7 I'm stuck until Checkpoint finally
> ponies up a 64-bit DaRT-compatible interface for the Pointsec full-disk
> encryption tool.
>
> Joe Morris

Thanks for filling in the gaps, i.e., the majority of my post :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 8/30/2010 5:51 PM, Nancy wrote:
> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's mistake -
>
> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try. Can
> I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
> something? Thanks.

Somebody suggested this to me, and it's great. Super simple to use. Got
me out of a jam.

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

Yousuf Khan

"ray" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:51:36 -0500, Nancy wrote:
>
>> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's
>> mistake -
>>
>> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
>> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
>> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
>> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
>> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try. Can
>> I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
>> something? Thanks.
>
> Last time I checked which, admittedly, was some time ago, the Knoppix
> Linux Live DVD had a utility to reset an MS admin password.

At the start of the year my Win7HPx64 laptop refused to accept my password
the second time I tried to boot it. None of the hacker tools (including CD
roms based on linux) would work on a 64-bit setup. Fortunately I hadn't
done much customisation with the laptop and so just had to let it do a
default reinstall from the HD recovery partition. No problems since.

Can any of the hacker tools now recover a password from a Win7 64-bit system
or let you in to reset it?

--

Jeff

"Jeff Layman" <> wrote in message news:i5ihm7$476$...
> "ray" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:51:36 -0500, Nancy wrote:
>>
>>> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's
>>> mistake -
>>>
>>> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
>>> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
>>> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
>>> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
>>> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try. Can
>>> I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
>>> something? Thanks.
>>
>> Last time I checked which, admittedly, was some time ago, the Knoppix
>> Linux Live DVD had a utility to reset an MS admin password.
>
> At the start of the year my Win7HPx64 laptop refused to accept my password
> the second time I tried to boot it. None of the hacker tools (including CD
> roms based on linux) would work on a 64-bit setup. Fortunately I hadn't
> done much customisation with the laptop and so just had to let it do a
> default reinstall from the HD recovery partition. No problems since.
>
> Can any of the hacker tools now recover a password from a Win7 64-bit system
> or let you in to reset it?
>
> --
>
> Jeff
>

My disk can:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HLLPGQPB
It's not possible to recover a Win7 password, i.e. decypher it, but you
can delete the password or replace it.

On 8/31/2010 6:01 AM, Dave-UK wrote:
>
> "Jeff Layman" <> wrote in message
> news:i5ihm7$476$...
>> "ray" <> wrote in message
>> news:...
>>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:51:36 -0500, Nancy wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello. I'm new to w7 and I'm afraid I've made quite a beginner's
>>>> mistake -
>>>>
>>>> I have a w7 pro 64bit machine I removed from the domain in order to
>>>> change the local admin password to send the machine in for service. But
>>>> the local admin account was disabled. I managed to enable it, but it
>>>> does not have a blank password or any password I would have assigned to
>>>> it as it will not let me log in with anything I can think of to try.
>>>> Can
>>>> I reset the local admin password through the recovery console or
>>>> something? Thanks.
>>>
>>> Last time I checked which, admittedly, was some time ago, the Knoppix
>>> Linux Live DVD had a utility to reset an MS admin password.
>>
>> At the start of the year my Win7HPx64 laptop refused to accept my
>> password the second time I tried to boot it. None of the hacker tools
>> (including CD roms based on linux) would work on a 64-bit setup.
>> Fortunately I hadn't done much customisation with the laptop and so
>> just had to let it do a default reinstall from the HD recovery
>> partition. No problems since.
>>
>> Can any of the hacker tools now recover a password from a Win7 64-bit
>> system or let you in to reset it?
>>
>> --
>>
>> Jeff
>
> My disk can:
> http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HLLPGQPB
> It's not possible to recover a Win7 password, i.e. decypher it, but you
> can delete the password or replace it.
>

Dave, your disc worked for me!

Thanks for getting me out of a real jam!