I cant get into my admin account ( I am using windows vista ) how do I get my password?

Moved to the Lounge.

Have you tried guessing the password? If you created the admin password, you might be able to remember it after a few tries.

I had this happen once; just changed the password earlier that day, and totally forgot it that evening. Took me about 45 minutes to guess the password, but I finally got it! :P

Try Ophcrack.

You should open up the case of your computer, swap out the hard drive with another working OS bootable drive, transfer any valuable data off the drive, then reformat it and reinstall Windows. You're probably not going to get your admin password back.

My father had forgot his once and I used this boot CD to blank it out. It was a breeze to use.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

The fullset of instructions are here
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/walkthrough.html

Quote: Original post by Gorg
My father had forgot his once and I used this boot CD to blank it out. It was a breeze to use.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

The fullset of instructions are here
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/walkthrough.html

I feel so much better about my privacy.

Ophcrack as mentioned looks like the most painless way to get your system back. But it involves some hacking skill, since you have to use another tool extract the SAM password file from windows, then treat it with Ophcrack. Also you only get the "directory-based" rainbow table for free, so if it doesn't do it, you'll have to pay for extra table. Perhaps you can find similar tools or tables elsewhere.

I have tried personally the method of blanking with Nordahl's boot disk. It works, but since you blank out the admin password, the hash is gone forever including files that is encrypted with that hash. Also, I feel uneasy about using a tool that edits the system files of another system. I would use the tool to get back my data from a locked system, then reinstall said system.

Quote: Original post by RealMarkP

Quote: Original post by Gorg
My father had forgot his once and I used this boot CD to blank it out. It was a breeze to use.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

The fullset of instructions are here
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/walkthrough.html

I feel so much better about my privacy.

With physical access to the computer, you could just as well take out the disk and read it from another system. Only way to totally protect your data is to lock it in a safe (you can actually buy computer desks that have locks.)

Other option is to encrypt the files from a profile with a secure password, i.e. one that can't be cracked. But then if you loose the pass like the OP, you loose the files forever.

If you never set up the admin account (ie, it's an OEM installation of Windows) the password may have been left blank. If you haven't already, try logging in without a password.